<\/p>\n
Oklahoma prosecutor<\/span> Jimmy Harmon was making his usual points about why Richard Glossip belongs behind bars when he trotted out a not-so-casual dig at his opposing counsel.<\/p>\n It was mid-February in Oklahoma City, and one of Glossip\u2019s lawyers had just explained the main reason why his client should be released on bond. Under Oklahoma law, defendants like Glossip are entitled to bail unless there is a firm basis to believe they are guilty. The evidence against Glossip had never been strong \u2014 and the U.S. Supreme Court demolished the state\u2019s case when it vacated Glossip\u2019s conviction<\/a> over false testimony and prosecutorial misconduct. Under the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling, the attorneys argued, there was no justification for keeping him in jail.<\/p>\n Harmon responded with scorn. \u201cThe defendant\u2019s argument reminds me of a Bruce Springsteen song,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s called \u2018Glory Days.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe gist of that song is that glory days will pass you by,\u201d he went on. Glossip\u2019s attorneys were clinging to their cherished Supreme Court victory because, after years of losing in court, \u201cthey finally won one,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd they want to wave that Supreme Court opinion around.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, Glossip\u2019s lawyers were like Springsteen\u2019s former high school baseball star \u2014 still talking about his winning fastball at a roadside bar.<\/p>\n In the quiet courtroom, Harmon\u2019s zinger landed with a thud. The comparison was clumsy and ill-fitting; a Supreme Court victory is anything but fleeting. Lawyers and courts are bound by Supreme Court decisions \u2014 invoking its rulings is sort of the point.<\/p>\n Glossip, meanwhile, sat at the defense table in his orange prison garb over a thermal shirt. Oklahoma County District Court Judge Natalie Mai \u2014 the seventh judge assigned to his case since the high court sent it back to Oklahoma \u2014 had allowed him to be unshackled for the hearing. Just a few days earlier, Glossip had turned 63, his 29th birthday behind bars. He knew more than most people about time you can never get back.<\/p>\n Glossip was twice convicted<\/a> and sentenced to die for the 1997 murder of his boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, who was brutally killed at the Best Budget Inn on the outskirts of town. A 19-year-old handyman named Justin Sneed admitted to fatally beating Van Treese but insisted that Glossip pushed him to do it. Sneed\u2019s account became the basis for the state\u2019s case against Glossip \u2014 and for a plea deal that allowed Sneed to avoid the death penalty. Sneed is serving a life sentence.<\/p>\n But the case began unraveling soon after Glossip arrived on death row. Footage of Sneed\u2019s police interrogation cast serious doubt on the state\u2019s version of events, revealing coercive questioning by Oklahoma City detectives who pressured Sneed into implicating Glossip. In the decades that followed, Glossip\u2019s attorneys discovered that prosecutors hid and destroyed evidence<\/a> in the case \u2014 and that Sneed had attempted to recant his testimony multiple times.<\/p>\n The case ultimately ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Glossip\u2019s favor on February 25, 2025. The justices found<\/a> that Sneed lied on the stand, that prosecutors had failed to correct his testimony, and that additional evidence of prosecutorial misconduct \u201cfurther undermines confidence in the verdict.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet one year later, the case is far from over. Rather than release Glossip, as advocates expected him to do, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced that he would retry Glossip<\/a> for first-degree murder \u2014 and asked a judge to keep him in jail awaiting trial. An Oklahoma County judge granted the request and refused to release <\/a>Glossip on bond, only to later step down from the case<\/a> after admitting that she was close friends with the lead prosecutor at his second trial. A revolving door of recusals<\/a> followed, with five more criminal court judges leaving the case due to their own ties to the district attorney\u2019s office<\/a> that sent Glossip to death row.<\/p>\n Natalie Mai is the seventh judge assigned to Glossip\u2019s case since the Supreme Court sent it back to Oklahoma. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Mai, a civil judge, was assigned to the case in December. It was now up to her to reconsider whether Glossip should be released from jail. Standing before her, defense attorney Corbin Brewster urged Mai to consider the Supreme Court\u2019s decision before weighing the other factors that judges use to make bond decisions \u2014 whether a defendant is a flight risk, for example, or a danger to the community. The \u201cthreshold question\u201d before the court, he said, was whether prosecutors could show by clear and convincing evidence that Glossip should be presumed guilty of murder. The answer was clearly no. If Mai agreed, she could rule from the bench and free Glossip that day.<\/p>\n But Mai wasn\u2019t ready to do that. She told Brewer that she had reserved the whole day for the hearing and would issue an order after considering all the evidence. \u201cI would like to get all the information today, so that way I can make a written finding in an expedient manner,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n After three decades insisting on his innocence, Glossip would have to wait a little bit longer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The 2025 ruling<\/span> in Glossip v. Oklahoma was momentous: an astonishing victory for a man who had stared down nine execution dates<\/a> and lived. For Glossip\u2019s longtime attorney, Don Knight, the ruling should have marked the end of a protracted legal battle that had made his client the most famous<\/a> death row prisoner in the country \u2014 and which had won the support of the Oklahoma attorney general himself.<\/p>\n Drummond, who entered the attorney general\u2019s office in 2023, once took unprecedented steps to stop Oklahoma from killing Glossip. After commissioning an independent investigation into his case, he asked<\/a> the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn Glossip\u2019s conviction. When the court refused<\/a>, setting Glossip up for execution, Drummond personally testified<\/a> before the state\u2019s pardon and parole board, urging them to spare Glossip\u2019s life.<\/p>\n But things changed in the months following the Supreme Court\u2019s decision. After initially basking<\/a> in the justices\u2019 ruling, Drummond vanished as the public face of the case. In June, he shocked Glossip\u2019s longtime supporters \u2014 including conservative allies of the Republican attorney general \u2014 by announcing he would retry Glossip<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n