Oklahoma Court: We Want Richard Glossip Dead and Evidence Be Damned | Hacker News Reader

Oklahoma Court: We Want Richard Glossip Dead and Evidence Be Damned

theintercept.com

39 pointsindigodaddy19 comments

> No physical evidence linked Glossip, the motel’s live-in manager, to the crime. Instead, the case against him was built almost exclusively on the testimony of a 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed, who admitted to bludgeoning Van Treese to death but said it was all Glossip’s idea. In exchange for testifying against Glossip, Sneed avoided the death penalty and was sentenced to life without parole. Glossip has always insisted on his innocence, and, over the last decade, evidence that he was wrongly convicted has steadily mounted.

> Much of this evidence supports Glossip’s contention that Sneed — a chronic drug user who demonstrated unpredictable bouts of violence — carried out the crime and only later set up Glossip as the mastermind. New witnesses have come forward to counter the state’s portrayal of Sneed as a hapless dolt who took direction from Glossip, testifying that Sneed was cunning, manipulative, and quite capable of killing a man on his own.

> “Because Glossip has not made the requisite showing of likely success” in further appeals or “irreparable harm” from any denial of his claims, “he is not entitled to stay of execution,” the justices wrote.

In what multiverse is an innocent man being executed not "irreparable harm"? Are the judges claiming they can raise the defendant from the dead after needlessly killing him?

Welcome to the American Justice system. In the Feds, you only have 14 days from sentencing to appeal a sentence. It used to be unlimited, but that was clogging up the courts because too many convicted people were exercising their constitutional rights, so they took it down to 14 days (or 30 days if you are the Government prosecutors because some animals are more equal than others).

https://www.justice.gov/jm/jm-2-4000-time-appeal-or-petition...

A lot of those 14 days get taken up with time in holding cells being moved from the Courthouse to a Federal Detention Center (or contracted local jail), moved from the pretrial holding facility to your final place of incarceration via Diesel Therapy, etc. If you are lucky you will get access to a law library, paper pad maybe an hour a day, but the Supreme Court has rules that is enough to fulfill your constitutional right to 'access to the courts'. You also need to figure out how to get the law library to weight your mail to put correct postage and get the certified mail forms, and to the jail/prison mail room during their 'open house' hours (normally 1-2 hours and at the same time lunch is served so you might not be eating lunch that day if you are at a place with controlled movements) so that you can send legal mail to mail your appeal (and how to come up with stamps to send certified mail to the Court and Prosecutor).

Edit: Getting stamps includes waiting for the once weekly commissary day to order them, and then potentially waiting for commissary to be delivered to your cell (shucks, it's delivered after the mail room open house 1-2 hour window) so that's up to a 9 day loss of time just to get stamps/envelopes after the appeal is written in triplicate (Court, Prosecutor, personal copy) so you can weigh it and know how many stamps you need to purchase.

Aren't you cherry picking cases where the defendant chose to represent himself?

Otherwise wouldn't their legal council handle the timely filing of an appeal?

Sorry for misunderstanding of what access to Constitutional rights mean in the United States. Thanks for clearing that up. 14 days to excursive your rights does seem totally reasonable now that you have clarified.

Not all counsel is willing to file an appeal as it tends to upset the local judge the lawyer goes before regularly when they 'go above the judges head' to the appeals court. Not everyone wants to use the same lawyer that just lost to do their appeal. 14 days to get new counsel, get them to understand your case, all while going through the process of being shipped to your final place of incarceration actually is reasonable, what was I thinking?

After spending $250,000 on a trial, getting resources together while in prison to try and appeal should totally just take 14 days. (lawyers, funnily, ask for a pretty large chunk up front).

Processing a judge's ruling and trying to see if you have grounds for an appeal that has a chance of success is super simple stuff. It's not like the law is complicated nor that lawyers have multiple clients and ongoing other cases.

Sorry guys, I was wrong, a 14 day expiration date on Constitutional rights that has been changed from the long standing previous 'unlimited' is actually totally reasonable. Also, the government getting 30 days (because obviously they are less completant and have less resources with only the full weight of the United States Government behind them) is also reasonable.

My bad.

"Not all counsel is willing to file an appeal as it tends to upset the local judge the lawyer goes before regularly when they 'go above the judges head' to the appeals court."

So you refer the client to an attorney that specializes in appeals? I don't see this as a real issue.

You have no issue with American citizens getting 14 days to exercise their right to appeal? What other Constitutional rights (the right to access the courts is a Constitutional right) have expiration dates?

You have no issue with American citizens having lessor rights than Federal officials? You think 14 days is fine, then why should the Federal Government be granted 30? If the government felt 30 days was needed, why limit lowly citizens to 14 days?

What other rights are you ok if we remove long standing precedent and process protections and reduce access to to a 2 week limit in the name of bureaucratic expediency?

To expand on this: why is it okay for the government to routinely ignore defendants' rights to a speedy trial while the government simultaneously demands an ungranted right to a speedy appeal?

I have no issue with an attorney being scared to appeal a decision, and referring the client to a different attorney.

I'm gonna guess you've never been in legal jeopardy, or flat broke, as many criminal defendants are.

So... people who represent themselves have no right to equal justice? Or just that they should need to clear an absurdly high bar?

I'm not saying the American justice system doesn't suck.

Just that the GP's story might start with "after explicitly refusing the services of their public defender, who'd normally be tasked with filing the paperwork for an appeal....".

It also sucks that people literally starve due to poverty, but if you're starving after explicitly refusing food stamps your story's going to sound very fun different.

While it's often said that 'a person who represents themselves has a fool for a lawyer', one certainly shouldn't be penalized for trying to care of one's own paperwork. Is there a rational reason not to have basic things like a photocopier and mail franking machine available for people using a prison law library? I don't see one.

It's amazing to me that the Attorney General himself thinks he might be innocent and wants the case retried, but the court just doesn't care? And the evidence looks incredibly flimsy. I'm fascinated that the court would just double down like this.

Elected judges don't go about looking weak on crime in OK. They also don't point out their system may have made mistakes.

The fact that anyone can look at the judicial system in the US and think that the death penalty is a good idea is insanity to me.

Governors as well. This would be an excellent use of the pardon, deliberately designed as a check on judicial power. But in this case they are both bloodthirsty.

And of course judges decisions are sancrosanct regardless of proven wrongs. The judge belongs swinging from the gallows more than the accused.

Update: the Supreme Court has halted his scheduled May 18th execution (while they consider his requests for an appeal).

https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-halts-executi...

A reminder, if you are looking for a cause to donate to, please consider the Innocence Project.

https://innocenceproject.org/

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