Oklahoma Drops Homicide Charge Against Richard Glossip After Nearly Executing Him Nine Times

The killing and the first two trials

In 1997, Barry Van Treese owned a run-down motel on the outskirts of Oklahoma City that his family had run for years. Richard Glossip managed it. Justin Sneed, then 19, worked there as a handyman and lived on the property.

One night that year, Sneed beat Van Treese to death with a baseball bat in Room 102. Sneed confessed to the killing, but told police, and later a jury, that Glossip had offered him $10,000 to do it, as part of what prosecutors called a murder-for-hire plot to let Glossip take over the motel.

Sneed pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and avoided the death penalty by agreeing to testify against Glossip. He is serving a sentence of life without parole. At Glossip's 1998 trial, prosecutor Fern Smith told the jury, "Glossip encouraged, aided and abetted and sent Mr. Sneed off to do his dirty work." The jury convicted Glossip of capital murder and sentenced him to death.

That conviction was overturned in 2001 on a finding of ineffective assistance of counsel — Glossip's trial lawyers had failed to show jurors a video of Sneed's police interrogation that raised questions about how detectives questioned him. A second jury convicted Glossip again in 2004, and he was sentenced to death a second time.

Nine execution dates and a case that fell apart

Over the next two decades, Oklahoma scheduled Glossip's execution nine times. At least three times, he was served what was expected to be his last meal. In 2015, then-Gov. Mary Fallin halted an execution at the last minute after officials discovered a mix-up in a shipment of lethal injection drugs.

In 2023, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond ordered an independent investigation by the law firm Reed Smith. It found Sneed had discussed recanting his testimony on and off for a decade, both before and after the 2004 conviction — including a handwritten note to his attorneys asking, "Do I have the choice of re-canting my testimony at anytime during my life, or anything like that," and another in which he called his testimony a "mistake." Those notes had never been turned over to Glossip's defense team.

Drummond moved to vacate Glossip's conviction. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals denied the request, but the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution on May 5, 2023, and on Feb. 25, 2025, ruled 5-3 in Glossip v. Oklahoma to throw out the 2004 conviction and order a new trial. Writing for the majority, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett concurring in part, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that prosecutors "violated [their] constitutional obligation to correct false testimony."

"After nearly executing him nine times, the State of Oklahoma has now dismissed the murder charge against him." — Don Knight, Richard Glossip's attorney

Who's who in the case

Richard Glossip, 63, managed the motel where Van Treese was killed and has spent nearly 30 years fighting the case, first from death row and now out on bond.

Barry Van Treese owned the motel with his family and was beaten to death there in 1997; members of his family have attended the recent hearings.

Justin Sneed, 19 at the time of the killing, admitted to swinging the bat and became the state's key witness against Glossip in exchange for a life sentence instead of death.

Don Knight has represented Glossip for years and has pushed publicly and in court for his release. Gentner Drummond, Oklahoma's attorney general, both ordered the investigation that exposed problems with Glossip's conviction and later chose to retry him. Judge Natalie Mai presided over Thursday's hearing and will decide Glossip's sentence.

What the guilty plea actually means

On June 9, 2025, Drummond announced his office would retry Glossip on a first-degree murder charge, but not seek the death penalty. In May 2026, Judge Mai set bail at $500,000 and released Glossip, citing the state's own 2023 concession that the evidence "does not support that he is guilty of first degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt." His release was aided in part by funds from celebrity criminal-justice-reform advocate Kim Kardashian, according to CNN.

A third trial was scheduled to begin in December 2026. Instead, at a Nov. 12 hearing meant to cover routine pretrial matters, Judge Mai accepted Glossip's guilty plea to accessory after the fact to first-degree murder and dismissed the murder charge outright. Members of the Van Treese family watched from the jury box. Mai did not ask Glossip any questions about the underlying crime itself.

The plea means Glossip admitted to helping cover up Van Treese's killing after it happened, not to ordering it or taking part in it. Under Oklahoma law as it stood in 1997, the maximum sentence for accessory after the fact was 45 years. Knight's team argues that, with credit for the decades Glossip has already served and good-behavior credits, he would have been eligible for release in 2016.

What each side has said

"For 30 years, Richard Glossip has maintained his innocence," Knight said in a statement released after the hearing. "After nearly executing him nine times, the State of Oklahoma has now dismissed the murder charge against him. This morning, to finally put this matter to rest, Rich pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact."

"We believe Rich has more than paid his debt to society by spending nearly 30 years on death row, during which time he was served three last meals, and came within minutes of being executed for a crime he did not commit," Knight added, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Knight pressed the point further on CNN, telling anchor Jake Tapper: "After 30 years, after nine execution dates, and three last meals, the state has finally admitted they do not have enough evidence to convict Richard Glossip of first-degree murder. They never had enough evidence to convict him of that." He added the plea had "nothing at all to do with the murder of Barry Van Treese": "He didn't know there was going to be a murder, he didn't take part in the murder. The plea that he made was actually to accessory after the fact."

Drummond framed the plea differently in a statement carried by CNN affiliate KOKH: "Today, Richard Glossip finally took some measure of responsibility for the murder of Barry Van Treese. While allowing Glossip to plead guilty to the lesser-related charge of accessory to first-degree murder was a difficult decision for me, and more importantly, the Van Treese family, we both recognize that this path ensures a conviction related to Mr. Van Treese's murder and gives us the best chance to secure additional prison time for Glossip."

Glossip, after his release on bond in May 2026, told the Associated Press: "I'm just thankful for my wife and my attorneys. Just thankful. It's overwhelming, but it's amazing at the same time."

What happens next

Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 17 and 18, 2026, before Judge Natalie Mai in Oklahoma County. Glossip's defense will ask for time served, arguing he would have been eligible for release a decade ago under the maximum sentence for accessory after the fact; prosecutors have said they intend to seek additional prison time.