Oklahoma is set to kill Richard Glossip, but he’s almost certainly innocent. Even Republicans there are in revolt. larabazelon reports on Glossip's last-ditch appeal to stave off death — and his powerful, unlikely ally
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Glossip, 59, has a powerful and unlikely ally who believes otherwise: Kevin McDugle, a Republican state representative. If Glossip succeeds in his last-ditch improbable appeal to stave off death, it will be owed, in part, to McDugle’s efforts. A former Marine who served three tours in combat, McDugle, 55, is conservative to the core, describing himself as a staunch foe of abortion, champion of the Second Amendment, and defender of “Christian values.
The Oklahoma City motel where Barry Van Treese was murdered, in the early morning hours of January 7, 1997. Photo: Courtesy Don Knight Officers questioned Glossip at the motel and claimed he had provided shifting and inconsistent accounts of when he had last seen Van Treese, even claiming to have seen his boss leave the motel to run errands hours after he was already dead.
Kevin McDugle had not followed Glossip’s case closely — criminal law did not interest him much. But several years ago, at the urging of his close friend Justin Jackson, a businessman and major donor to Republican politicians in the state, McDugle watched a 2017 four-part docuseries called Killing Richard Glossip. At the end, he told me, “I was iffy on innocence.” Still, doubts nagged at him.
McDugle decided he needed to meet Glossip, so he went to visit him on death row in the state penitentiary. “Honestly, I wanted to get a feel for him,” he explained. Like McDugle, Glossip is a devout Christian. Glossip’s faith and generosity — even toward his captors — impressed McDugle. “Him as a person, I found him to be genuine, kind,” McDugle says. On three separate occasions in 2015, Glossip came close enough to execution that he was fed his last meal.
On September 30, 2015, minutes before he was scheduled to die, Glossip got an improbable reprieve from then-Governor Mary Fallin. The state had been caught ordering the wrong lethal drug — potassium acetate — and falsely claiming it was “interchangeable.” It turned out that the drug, which is also used to de-ice airport runways, had been used on Warner, but no one caught the error at the time. It was hours before Glossip was given the news.
Richard Glossip in 1998. Photo: Courtesy Don Knight Nor was it likely that Sneed gave Glossip any of Van Treese’s money. The cash in Sneed’s possession was smeared with blood; the bills recovered from Glossip, about $1,800, were clean and of a different denomination. Sneed was also likely lying when he claimed to have netted $4,000 — the law firm’s accounting of what Van Treese took back to his car hours before his death was closer to $2,800.
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