Potentially innocent man about to be executed

marplots said:
It seems we are getting two quite different stories here. One of malfeasance and conspiracy, the other of correct procedure.
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I don't think it has to be this at all. Our understanding of police interrogation techniques have come a long way in the last 15 years, we now have started to understand why certain techniques that were thought to be reliable 15-20 years ago, should actually be considered terrible and likely to end up giving false information and confessions.

At the time I am sure that the Police believed that Gossip was guilty because of supposed inconsistencies in his story, and they figured that working on the weaker link would prove it. The trouble is that in doing so, they basically told Sneed exactly what they wanted to hear him say, and then rewarded him when he did so. (You can see some of the transcripts at the end of the previously linked PDF.)

I don't know if you have kids, but imagine this scenario....

To Younger kid - Look I know you took the cookies, but I don't think you did it alone. I have your brother telling me you did it all, so if you don't tell me what really happened and who was involved with you, you'll get all the punishment. If you tell me who it was and what happened, I'll make sure you don't get punished as bad.

What do you think the kid is going to say?

This is what the cops did, They told Sneed they knew others were involved. They told him they had Richard under arrest. They told him that they knew he didn't plan it and wanted to know who did, and as a reward for telling them what they wanted to hear, they got him a lighter sentence than the threatened death penalty. It's pure human nature. The Cops served Gossip up to Sneed on a silver platter and got him to play their puppet. They might not have realised they were doing that at the time, but they did it. It's no different to those physiatrists that ended up implanting "recovered memories" in their patients by bad practices.
 
Bob001 said:
No it doesn't, actually. Glossip has consistently said that he neither killed anybody nor caused anybody else to kill anybody. His "changed story" is apparently that he didn't at first tell police that Sneed claimed to have killed Van Treese because he thought Sneed was joking. You'd think if he was really trying to get away with murder he might have pointed the finger at somebody else at the very earliest opportunity. The prosecution has to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and there's plenty of doubt here.
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Sneed's changing his story (didn't do it: accident; spomsored hit) makes sense if you believe he is guilty. Glossop's changing his story why he covered up the killing makes no sense if he is innocent.
 
PhantomWolf said:
This is what the cops did, They told Sneed they knew others were involved. They told him they had Richard under arrest. They told him that they knew he didn't plan it and wanted to know who did, and as a reward for telling them what they wanted to hear, they got him a lighter sentence than the threatened death penalty. It's pure human nature. The Cops served Gossip up to Sneed on a silver platter and got him to play their puppet. They might not have realised they were doing that at the time, but they did it. It's no different to those physiatrists that ended up implanting "recovered memories" in their patients by bad practices.
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How is the result different if Glossip really did it? That's a real problem in the analysis - it comes out the same whether Sneed is lying or telling the truth. That's why testimony before a jury is important. They are expected to decide whether testimony is believable or not. Lots of people have incentives to lie - for lots of reasons. Simply supposing there's a reason for person X to lie doesn't tell you whether or not they are lying.

Consider this. Glossip has every incentive to lie if he's guilty. Why shouldn't we assume he's lying, since he has such a good reason?

I hope you see the difficulty here. We need some method to distinguish a reluctant confession of conspiracy from Sneed from a lie to get a reduced sentence. That's the tough part.
 
marplots said:
How is the result different if Glossip really did it? That's a real problem in the analysis - it comes out the same whether Sneed is lying or telling the truth. That's why testimony before a jury is important. They are expected to decide whether testimony is believable or not. Lots of people have incentives to lie - for lots of reasons. Simply supposing there's a reason for person X to lie doesn't tell you whether or not they are lying.

Consider this. Glossip has every incentive to lie if he's guilty. Why shouldn't we assume he's lying, since he has such a good reason?

I hope you see the difficulty here. We need some method to distinguish a reluctant confession of conspiracy from Sneed from a lie to get a reduced sentence. That's the tough part.
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The issue is that the testimony is tainted because we have no way of knowing if it's the truth, or a fabrication based on what the police told Sneed mixed with more details fabricated to make it sound good. The fact that the story continued to evolve, add new details that made Glossip look guiltier and himself look not as guilty is a huge red flag, but no individual Jury ever got to see that. They didn't get to see the beginnings of the creation of the story in the interview (no idea why considering it was one of the grounds for Appeal in the first trial, but since the second was done by the public defender's office, it's not surprising.) Nor would they have seen the changes in his testimony between the first and second trials. All they would have seen was what he said during the trial itself. We can see the lot, and in knowing that see that there is something really wrong with the why it came about. All the Jury got to see was the final finished and polished product.

A bit like this....

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If you saw that as a finished product, would you believe that it started out as Animal Dung?

By the time the Jury got to see Sneed's testimony is was well rehearsed and embellished, they didn't get it see it as it was back when it was dung.

We can see that, and we can see that it was tainted right at the start by the cops telling him what they wanted to hear. As soon as they did that, there is no way to determine if he is telling them the truth, or just what they wanted to hear, and that's what makes his testimony worthless. It was poor interview technique and at best it has destroyed the real credibility of the witness when the entire overview is allowed to be seen, and at worse, it could cost an innocent person his life.
 
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Noztradamus said:
Sneed's changing his story (didn't do it: accident; spomsored hit) makes sense if you believe he is guilty. Glossop's changing his story why he covered up the killing makes no sense if he is innocent.
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Who says Glossip "covered up the killing?" His story is that after Sneed told Glossip he killed Van Treese, Glossip didn't tell the police at first because he thought it was a bad joke. What evidence -- other than Sneed's allegations -- is there that Glossip "covered up the killing?"
 
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marplots said:
Here are a few comments from one of the jurors (second trial). They are interesting. http://www.kjrh.com/news/state/zach...-during-richard-glossips-second-trial-in-2004
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So the juror is a shrink?
"From the evidence he saw in court, Vorbornik describes Glossip as a manipulative person and a sociopath and he says he wants the public to know the facts of the case that he says led two juries to convict Glossip of murder."
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Did the prosecution even offer psychiatric evidence? The juror says Glossip's story "made no sense?" I'd say that juror may have filled in some blanks on his own.
 
Bob001 said:
Who says Glossip "covered up the killing?" His story is that after Sneed told Glossip he killed Van Treese, Glossip didn't tell the police at first because he thought it was a bad joke. What evidence -- other than Sneed's allegations -- is there that Glossip "covered up the killing?"
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He did

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ok-court-of-criminal-appeals/1466730.html

¶ 48 The State presented an enormous amount of evidence that Glossip concealed Van Treese's body from investigators all day long and he lied about the broken window.   He admitted knowing that Sneed killed Van Treese in room 102.   He knew about the broken glass.   However, he never told anyone that he thought Sneed was involved in the murder, until after he was taken into custody that night, after Van Treese's body was found.   Glossip intentionally lied by telling people that Van Treese had left early that morning to get supplies.   In fact, Van Treese was killed hours before Glossip claimed to have seen Van Treese that morning.   Glossip's stories about when he last saw Van Treese were inconsistent.   He first said that he last saw him at 7:00 a.m.;   later he said he saw him at 4:30 a.m.   Finally, he said he last saw him at 8:00 p.m. the night before Van Treese's death, and he denied making other statements regarding the time he last saw Van Treese.

¶ 49 Glossip also intentionally steered everyone away from room 102.   He told Billye Hooper that Van Treese had left to get materials, and that Van Treese stayed in room 108 the night before.   He told Jackie Williams, a housekeeper at the motel, not to clean any downstairs rooms (which included room 102).   He said that he and Sneed would clean the downstairs rooms.   He told a number of people that two drunken cowboys broke the window, and he tried to implicate a person who was observed at the nearby Sinclair station as one of the cowboys.

¶ 50 He told Everhart that he would search the rooms for Van Treese, and then he told Sneed to search the rooms for Van Treese.   No other person searched the rooms until seventeen hours after the murder, when Van Treese's body was discovered.

¶ 51 The next day, Glossip began selling all of his belongings, before he admitted that he actively concealed Van Treese's body.   He told Everhart that “he was going to be moving on.”   He failed to show up for an appointment with investigators, so the police had to take him into custody for a second interview where he admitted that he actively concealed Van Treese's body.   He said he lied about Sneed telling him about killing Van Treese, not to protect Sneed, but because he felt like he “was involved in it.” - See more at: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ok-court-of-criminal-appeals/1466730.html#sthash.V1u8OOBo.dpuf
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Noztradamus said:
He did
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The appeals court document that you link to -- and also cited above through a different link -- states the prosecution's claims as if they were undisputed facts. Glossip's supporters dispute pretty much all of it, line by line.

http://www.richardeglossip.com/the-case-1.html
http://www.richardeglossip.com/the-case--cont.-.html
http://www.sisterhelen.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Richard_Glossip_talking_points.pdf
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opin...oklahoma-prejean-sarandon-20150914-story.html
 
marplots said:
This is a good point. Have you seen these videos? If you have, you are in possession of evidence that neither I nor the jury has seen. I do not know if the matter was raised on appeal or not, nor who else has seen this evidence.
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I haven't had time to watch them, but 90 minutes of videos from Sneed's interrogation are available on line:
http://www.okcfox.com/story/2978331...for-first-time-since-controversial-conviction
http://www.okcfox.com/story/29783590/full-video-justin-sneed-interrogation

Keep in mind that this is the guy who actually beat a man to death with a baseball bat, whether Glossip was involved or not.
 
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It appears from that link that Glossip helped fix a broken window but did not notice a dead body while doing so, indeed the body of his boss he had probably defrauded. There should be some way to interpret this in an innocence theory.
 
Bob001 said:
The appeals court document that you link to -- and also cited above through a different link -- states the prosecution's claims as if they were undisputed facts. Glossip's supporters dispute pretty much all of it, line by line.http://www.richardeglossip.com/the-case-1.html
http://www.richardeglossip.com/the-case--cont.-.html
http://www.sisterhelen.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Richard_Glossip_talking_points.pdf
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opin...oklahoma-prejean-sarandon-20150914-story.html
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You surprise me. Of course they do.

Point is the Appeals Court accepted those claims, not the dissention of Glossip's supporters.

Glossip had his day in court, now he's having it in the media
 
marplots said:
However, that's a good challenge, should those tapes show what you assert. I would be curious to know if the defense determined not to show the tapes, the judge disallowed them, or something else happened. But that is, at least, a nice wedge issue.
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At the original trial, they chose not to show the tapes. On appeal, it was determined that not showing the tapes was an act of incompetence of his lawyers, and a new hearing was granted. (I don't remember exactly what was granted...I just read some web sites at lunch time. I'm pretty sure it was not a full new trial, but it did involve an opportunity to review evidence.) When the defense was given an opportunity again to show the tapes, they declined. During the appeal after that, this was once again cited as incompetence, but this time the judge didn't buy it. (I do not know if different lawyers and/or judges were involved.)

I find these sorts of cases interesting, so I will probably look into this one a bit more, but based on a preliminary review, I think the most likely explanation is that he is guilty. I don't know if I think I would say beyond a reasonable doubt, though.

There is one thing that really has me scratching my head, though. The prosecution theory is that Glossip paid Sneed to kill. He told Sneed to look for the money in the victim's car. Sneed pulled it out an they split up the money.

Whoa. What? That was Sneed's payment. Why split the money?

Alternative theory. Glossip is grumbling about Van Treese, and tells Sneed, a useless bum just barely more than a child, totally dependent on Glossip for what little sustenance he has, that Van Treese will fire them both. Sneed kills Van Treese, and then tells Glossip he did it. Glossip decides to take advantage of the situation and threatens to tell the cops unless Sneed hands over some of the loot.

I'll try to look into it and see what I think about it after further review.
 
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Noztradamus said:
You surprise me. Of course they do.

Point is the Appeals Court accepted those claims, not the dissention of Glossip's supporters.

Glossip had his day in court, now he's having it in the media
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An appeals court accepts the verdict of the trial court and examines the record for procedural errors. It does not retry the case from scratch. It does not examine evidence or question witnesses. If a key witness lies, for example, the appeals court doesn't pass judgment on his credibility or even have a basis to do so. Glossip's first trial was thrown out because his lawyer was wildly incompetent. His defenders claim that his second lawyer was not much better for failing to challenge the prosecution and present exculpatory evidence. At least some of the evidence they are presenting "in the media" -- like Sneed's interrogation -- was not heard by either trial jury. The key question is whether Glossip's story could be true. He's not claiming that Martians killed his boss or that a roving motorcycle gang unseen by anybody else killed one person in one room and floated away like mist. He is claiming that Sneed acted alone, and fingered him to save himself from the death penalty. That is a plausible story, and by itself it creates reasonable doubt unless it can be proven false. I don't think Sneed's testimony alone is enough.

Former Sen. Tom Coburn -- certainly one of the most conservative members of Congress -- is one of the people who signed a letter supporting Glossip.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barry-scheck/is-oklahoma-about-to-exec_b_8123548.html
 
Meadmaker said:
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Alternative theory. Glossip is grumbling about Van Treese, and tells Sneed, a useless bum just barely more than a child, totally dependent on Glossip for what little sustenance he has, that Van Treese will fire them both. Sneed kills Van Treese, and then tells Glossip he did it. Glossip decides to take advantage of the situation and threatens to tell the cops unless Sneed hands over some of the loot.
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The thing is that neither Sneed nor the prosecution offered that theory. Sneed's claim is that Glossip made him commit murder. And if Glossip had "taken advantage of the situation" after the fact he certainly would have said so, because that would get him a far lesser charge -- maybe obstruction of justice -- than capital murder. I think we have to consider that either Sneed is telling the truth or he's lying, not that there's a third story so far unheard.
 
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