\n<\/p>\n
Richard Glossip woke<\/span> up on Christmas morning at the Oklahoma County Detention Center, a 13-story, red-brick tower in downtown Oklahoma City. He did a video visit with his wife Lea, then talked to her on the phone as he was served his dinner tray \u2014 a bit of turkey and some instant mashed potatoes.<\/p>\n It was not how he\u2019d pictured his first Christmas after leaving death row.<\/p>\n Glossip won the victory of a lifetime last February, when the U.S. Supreme Court vacated his conviction<\/a>, finding that it was rooted in false testimony and prosecutorial misconduct. After almost three decades facing execution for a crime he swore he didn\u2019t commit, Glossip hoped the ruling would mark the end of his ordeal.<\/p>\n But nearly a year later, he was stuck in the county jail with no end in sight. Rather than resolve the case as Glossip\u2019s advocates expected him to do, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who is running for governor, announced that he planned to retry Glossip<\/a> for first-degree murder \u2014 and asked a judge to reject his request for bond in the meantime. Although defense lawyers pointed out<\/a> that their 62-year-old client was not a flight risk and posed no danger to society, prosecutors convinced Oklahoma County District Court Judge Heather Coyle to keep Glossip at the jail<\/a> \u2014 a notoriously overcrowded and filthy facility known as one of the deadliest<\/a> in the country.<\/p>\n In the months since, the state has been unable to get its prosecution off the ground. Glossip\u2019s legal team has successfully sought the recusal of every criminal court judge assigned to the case \u2014 all of them former prosecutors who once worked<\/a> for the Oklahoma County District Attorney, the same office that sent Glossip to death row. While the attorney general\u2019s office has accused Glossip\u2019s lawyers of \u201cjudge shopping,\u201d an October evidentiary hearing showed the defense attorneys\u2019 concerns over the judges\u2019 impartiality to be well-founded. One judge assigned to the trial, who had originally refused to step down, was revealed to have taken multiple vacations <\/a>with the original prosecutor in Glossip\u2019s case.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, each recusal has pushed a potential trial date further into the future. While Glossip has had no choice but to be patient, the wait is taking its toll. The sensory chaos of the county jail is overwhelming for a man who spent decades in isolation on death row. According to Lea, he wears foam earplugs to try to drown out the constant noise, sometimes wrapping a towel around his head.<\/p>\n The conditions are \u201cabsolutely exhausting,\u201d Lea said. And while Glossip is grateful to no longer be under a death sentence, he is now in a kind of \u201cpurgatory\u201d \u2014 waiting for a trial that seems less likely to happen with each passing day.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not where we ever expected to be,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Glossip was twice<\/span> convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of hotel owner Barry Van Treese at a rundown Best Budget Inn on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to attacking and fatally beating Van Treese with a baseball bat but claimed that Glossip coerced him into committing the crime in exchange for money. Sneed agreed to testify against Glossip in exchange for a life sentence. He remains incarcerated.<\/p>\n But Sneed\u2019s story was shaky from the start \u2014 and the state\u2019s case against Glossip began falling apart from the moment he was sentenced to die. Over the decades that followed, numerous witnesses came forward<\/a> to counter the state\u2019s portrayal of Sneed as a follower who was powerless to stand up to Glossip, describing him instead as calculating and violent. Glossip\u2019s attorneys also uncovered records revealing that Sneed sought to recant his testimony against Glossip on multiple occasions.<\/p>\n \u201cBesides Sneed, no other witness and no physical evidence established that Glossip orchestrated Van Treese\u2019s murder.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Nevertheless, Glossip came close to execution numerous times before Drummond took office in January 2023 and immediately announced<\/a> that he was launching an independent investigation into the case. Unlike his predecessors, who had aggressively fought back against Glossip\u2019s innocence claims, Drummond expressed concern over the possibility that the case was a miscarriage of justice. The resulting review found myriad red flags \u2014 including that prosecutors had hidden key evidence from Glossip\u2019s defense and that Sneed had lied on the stand \u2014 convincing Drummond that Glossip\u2019s death sentence should not be carried out. In April 2023, he asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to vacate<\/a> Glossip\u2019s conviction.<\/p>\n At the same time, behind the scenes, Drummond was secretly discussing an agreement<\/a> with Glossip\u2019s longtime attorney, Don Knight, to resolve the case. \u201cOnce the conviction is vacated,\u201d Knight wrote to Drummond in an email on April 1, the state would bring a new charge against his client: \u201ca single count of being an Accessory After the Fact.\u201d Glossip \u201cwill plead guilty to this charge\u201d and be given credit for time served. Under the terms, Glossip would be entitled to immediate release.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are in agreement,\u201d Drummond replied.<\/p>\n But in a stunning move, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Drummond\u2019s request<\/a> to overturn the conviction. It was not until after the Supreme Court took up Glossip\u2019s case and ruled in his favor almost two years later that the secret deal between Drummond and Knight could finally move forward. According to Knight, all signs pointed to the plan remaining in place<\/a> after the high court\u2019s decision \u2013 Drummond\u2019s office told him to expect Glossip\u2019s release to take place by Easter.<\/p>\n But that never happened. Instead, on April 22, 2025, Glossip was picked up from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and driven to Oklahoma City, where he was booked<\/a> into the county jail just before 3 a.m. In early June, Drummond announced that he would try Glossip for first-degree murder.<\/p>\n Today, with the race for governor in full swing, Drummond denies that he ever made a deal with Knight. After Knight exposed their emailed agreement in a motion<\/a> filed this summer \u2014 filing a lengthy affidavit detailing how Drummond made the deal \u201cbased on his own political calculus\u201d \u2014 the attorney general\u2019s office rejected his version of events. \u201cContrary to defense counsel\u2019s abrupt, new theory, the parties have never reached a plea agreement in this matter,\u201d prosecutors wrote.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n