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Barry Van Treese owned a Best Budget Inn in Tulsa and in Oklahoma City. P managed the Oklahoma City hotel and lived there with his girlfriend. In the summer of 1996, Sneed and his stepbrother approached P and asked him about working for a room. P agreed to let them stay in return for help with maintenance and housekeeping. Sneed had a history of violence, angry outbursts, and substance abuse that included marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine, and acid. Sneed beat Treese to death with a baseball bat. Sneed evaded law enforcement for several days. Police interviewed P, who told them that Sneed had knocked on his door that night with a bump on his head “like somebody punched him.” P disclaimed any knowledge of Van Treese’s murder, but admitted that he helped Sneed replace (from the outside) the broken window of the room where Van Treese’s body was later found. The next day, officers arrested P in front of an attorney’s office with approximately $1,700 in cash on him. P then admitted Sneed had told him “that he killed Barry.” The State charged Sneed with capital murder and P as an accessory after the fact based on his inaccurate statements to the police. Eventually, police located and interviewed Sneed, who had $1,680 in bloody cash on him. Eventually, Sneed said that P had wanted to steal Van Treese’s money and that Van Treese’s death had been the result of a robbery gone wrong. Sneed described breaking into Van Treese’s room and beating him with a baseball bat until he “figured he was knocked out.” Sneed then took Van Treese’s car keys, stole an envelope with approximately $4,000 in cash from his car, and split the money with P. When officers pressed him on the state of Van Treese’s body, Sneed asserted that P had asked him to kill Van Treese so that he “could run the motel without him being the boss. P was charged with capital murder. The prosecution offered P a deal: plead guilty and avoid the death sentence in return for testifying against Sneed. P refused, maintaining his innocence. The State offered Sneed the same deal, and Sneed accepted. Sneed testified at P’s trial that he beat Van Treese to death “because P asked him to do it.” Sneed testified that time that Mr. Van Treese showed up, P was wanting me to kill him. At closing, the prosecution argued that P had asked Sneed to kill Van Treese because he believed Van Treese planned to fire him for embezzling hotel profits. P was convicted and sentenced to death. The OCCA unanimously reversed because the evidence at trial tending to corroborate Sneed’s testimony was extremely weak. Also, Defense counsel’s failure to cross-examine Sneed on his many inconsistent statements was therefore “so ineffective” as to undermine any “confidence that a reliable adversarial proceeding took place.” P rejected another plea offer, and the State tried him a second time. Several witnesses confirmed what P had told the police in his second interview: In the hours following Van Treese’s killing, P feigned ignorance and lied about Van Treese’s whereabouts. As in the first trial, only one witness, Sneed, testified that P was involved in anything more. The defense established that Van Treese had been attacked with a knife as well as with a baseball bat. Sneed had denied stabbing Van Treese to the police and at P’s first trial. At the second trial, he now said that he had repeatedly tried to stab Van Treese in the chest with a pocket knife. The prosecution had not notified the defense about this change in testimony. D moved for a mistrial. The trial court denied that motion after the prosecution attested that the change was news to them, too. The prosecution also asked Sneed whether anyone had prescribed him any medication. Sneed said that somehow they ended up giving him Lithium for some reason, and he didn't know why; I never seen no psychiatrist or anything. Sneed confirmed that he used illegal drugs including marijuana and “crank” (methamphetamine) “twice a week” prior to his arrest. Sneed asserted that P had suggested “robbing Barry of his money” and that P had worried he “was going to get fired” because “a couple of the rooms that were already supposed to be remodeled . . . weren’t.” The prosecution weaved these suggestions into its closing argument along with its original theory that P had wanted Van Treese dead to avoid being fired for embezzlement. It then argued that Sneed, “satisfied and contented with [his] humble life,” had no propensity to violence except at P’s direction. The jury again convicted P of capital murder and again sentenced him to death. The OCCA affirmed, holding that circumstantial evidence suggesting P had mismanaged the hotel, combined with the concession that P had been dishonest in his initial statements after the murder, sufficiently corroborated Sneed’s testimony that he killed Van Treese at P’s direction. P continued to maintain his innocence in the years after his conviction, filing several habeas petitions in state and federal court. A bipartisan group of 62 Oklahoma legislators retained a law firm, Reed Smith, to conduct an independent investigation into the case. Reed Smith reported its “grave doubt as to the integrity of Glossip’s murder conviction and death sentence.” Reed Smith concluded the prosecution had deliberately destroyed “key physical evidence” before P’s retrial, including several items from the crime scene and the inn’s receipts and deposit books, which could have helped P address the accusations of embezzlement. Reed Smith concluded the prosecution had deliberately destroyed “key physical evidence” before P’s retrial, including several items from the crime scene and the inn’s receipts and deposit books, which could have helped P address the accusations of embezzlement. Id., at 7, 9, n. 25, 34, 48. Reed Smith further concluded that the State had “falsely portrayed Sneed at trial as a meek and non-violent ‘puppet,’” and that key testimony about P’s motive and actions on the morning after the murder had been provided by a former police officer of “‘very limited honesty and integrity’” who was jailed for making false statements shortly after P’s second trial. Two months after Reed Smith’s report, the State disclosed seven boxes of previously withheld documents. The head prosecutor, Connie Smothermon, talked with Sneed’s lawyer before Sneed testified at the second trial and about Sneed's testimony about the knife. The boxes contained letters from Sneed to his attorney suggesting he had expressed a desire to recant his testimony prior to P’s second trial. Sneed wrote to his attorney asking “‘do I have the choice of recanting my testimony at any time during my life,’” and is “‘there . . . anything you know, on [P’s] court date and about recanting.’” Based on this new evidence and the evidence revealed by Reed Smith, P filed another motion for postconviction relief with the OCCA. The OCCA held that P’s claims were procedurally barred as well as meritless. Shortly thereafter, the State “unearthed disturbing revelations about the contents of ” an eighth box of trial documents “consisting of material it previously prevented the defense from obtaining.” There, “was a page of notes handwritten by Smothermon during a pretrial interview with Sneed,” indicating “that Sneed had told Smothermon that he was ‘on lithium’ not by mistake, but in connection with a ‘Dr. Trumpet.’” A summary of Sneed’s medical records (previously withheld from P’s counsel after motion practice seeking their discovery) showed that Sneed had received lithium to treat his undisclosed bipolar disorder. After this discovery, Dr. Trombka signed an affidavit attesting that he was the only medical professional at the jail who would have prescribed Sneed lithium. The attorney general held that “despite her knowledge of these facts,” Smothermon “elicited false testimony from Sneed” on that subject. An independent counsel concluded that Smothermon’s attempt to interfere with Sneed’s testimony about the knife violated the rule of sequestration, that her failure to turn over Sneed’s statements about his mental health treatment violated Brady v. Maryland, and that her failure to correct Sneed’s false trial testimony that he had been given lithium after asking for cold medicine violated Napue. The attorney general concluded that P’s conviction must be vacated. P filed a successive petition for post-conviction relief with the OCCA asserting Brady, Napue, cumulative error, and actual innocence claims. The OCCA denied P’s unopposed petition without a hearing. It then held that P’s claims were procedurally barred. It concluded separately that the evidence presented by the parties did not “create a Napue error.” P appealed. The Supreme Court stayed P’s execution at the joint request of the parties and granted certiorari to consider P’s Brady and Napue claims and the effect of the attorney general’s confession of error. (Note: there are more facts to the case given by the Dissent.)

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