They say they have a signed affidavit from the inmate, Michael Scott, that he heard Sneed say “he set Richard Glossip up, and that Richard Glossip didn’t do anything”.
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Glossip has maintained his innocence, and his attorneys filed a last-minute request for a stay of execution late Tuesday.
The reprieve was announced about three hours before Glossip, 52, was set to die by lethal injection.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) said her office will abide by the court’s decision.
A week later, Sneed said that Glossip, his supervisor at the Oklahoma City motel, had instructed him to do it. Based on that testimony alone, Glossip was convicted of murder and sentenced to death during a 2004 retrial.
Richard Eugene Glossip was scheduled for execution at 3 p.m. Wednesday afternoon.
Richard Glossip is scheduled to die Wednesday despite widespread concerns about his trial and the way Oklahoma plans to execute him. “We’re really excited”, Glossip-Hodge said.
“I have to tell you that I’m speechless”, said Glossip’s attorney Don Knight.
There was no physical evidence linking the father-of-four to hotel boss Barry Van Treese’s death while Sneed never once mentioned Glossip in his police interviews until coached by detectives.
Sneed, now incarcerated at Joseph Harp Correctional Center, testified against Glossip in exchange for a sentence of life in prison without parole. The woman Sarandon portrayed in the movie, anti-death penalty advocate Sister Helen Prejean, has served as Glossip’s spiritual adviser and frequently visited him in prison. He was convicted of ordering the beating death of a motel owner in 1997 in what prosecutors say was a murder-for-hire. But what’s not only unforgivable, but downright immoral, is that the prosecution put forward the Glossip-as-mastermind theory in a capital case, with a man’s life on the line, when Sneed couldn’t even keep his story straight.
Lawyers for Glossip and two other Oklahoma death row inmates had challenged the use of midazolam, saying it could not achieve the level of unconsciousness required for surgery, making it unsuitable for executions.
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Past year Clayton Lockett’s was one of the longest in U.S. history and the drug failed to work properly leaving his writhing in agony strapped to a the gurney for nearly an hour before dying of a heart attack.
