This should be a simple question of morality: If considerable doubt exists about whether a man is guilty of murder, don't put him to death. Period, end of question.
Yet that’s what Oklahoma is scheduled to do on May 18 to a man named Richard Glossip, dubiously convicted of hiring a hit man to kill a motel owner in 1997. My colleague Tim Carney aptly summarized the case two days ago, explaining that the actual killer, who lied about his use of psychiatric drugs, had pointed to Glossip “only after the detectives mentioned Glossip's name to [him] six times during his interrogation.”
OKLAHOMA ATTORNEY GENERAL WANTS TO VACATE CONVICTION OF DEATH ROW INMATE
For those reasons and others demonstrating serious doubts as to whether Glossip had been involved, the conservative Republican attorney general of Oklahoma petitioned state courts to have the entire conviction thrown out, and 62 Oklahoma legislators, a large majority of whom are Republicans who support the death penalty in general, have called for a new evidentiary hearing.
Today, on the National Day of Prayer, a host of leaders of different faiths and denominations are gathering at the Oklahoma Capitol to ask for a stay of execution.
Oklahoma has an unusual law providing that a governor cannot grant clemency without approval of a majority of the state parole board. The parole board split 2-2 on the question. Nonetheless, state law does allow Gov. Ken Stitt, another Republican, the power to grant a 60-day delay of execution. As Glossip has multiple appeals pending before various courts, this delay could provide the time necessary to save his life for good.
To favor the 60-day stay of execution, one need not know the granular details of the case against Glossip. In fact, someone can support clemency for Glossip even if that someone generally disapproves of the difficulty of death-penalty implementation across the country, replete with what seem to be a gazillion means of appeal and delay that take years or even decades to resolve. That same someone can want a reprieve for Glossip even while believing that once a jury has duly convicted a man of a crime heinous enough to trigger the death penalty, the penalty should not be abandoned because of smallish, speculative doubts.
What we have here is not just a shadow of doubt. What we have here is doubt so considerable that a host of tough-on-crime lawmakers believe those doubts are significant, after two major, independent reports found that Glossip’s trials were horribly compromised.
Richard Glossip already has spent 25 years behind bars for a murder actually carried out by another man, a murder which Glossip may not even have catalyzed at all. Any system of morality that values innocent human life must err on the side of the life of a man whose innocence of the crime, in retrospect, is more than a theoretical possibility.
So why is Stitt waiting? To allow Glossip those 60 days is both to do justice and to love mercy, not to mention walking humbly with God.