“All three of the Court\u2019s Democrats, meanwhile, appeared sympathetic to Glossip\u2019s arguments, and spent much of the case batting down Alito\u2019s proposals to dismiss the case on procedural grounds \u2014 though Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson showed some openness to forming an alliance with Thomas to send the case back down to the state courts in order to gather additional evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That leaves Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, conservative Republicans who asked some questions that appeared sympathetic to Glossip, as the wild cards in this case. It is possible that they could provide the fourth and fifth vote to save Glossip\u2019s life, but far from certain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The alleged constitutional violation that is before the Court \u2014 that prosecutors withheld evidence that a key witness has a serious mental illness, and failed to correct this witness when he lied on the stand \u2014 is fairly marginal<\/a>. It turns on four words in handwritten notes by prosecutor Connie Smothermon that were not turned over to Glossip\u2019s lawyers until January 2023. The state agrees with Glossip\u2019s legal team that these four words reveal a sufficiently serious constitutional violation to justify giving him a new trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But while this narrow legal issue, which is the only issue before the Supreme Court, is the kind of legal question that reasonable judges could disagree upon, Smothermon\u2019s notes are only one piece of a wide range of evidence suggesting that Glossip\u2019s criminal conviction is unconstitutional: Oklahoma conducted two independent investigations, both of which concluded that Glossip\u2019s trial was fundamentally flawed<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among other things, those investigations found that Justin Sneed \u2014 the man who actually committed the murder at issue here \u2014 was pressured by police to implicate Glossip in the crime. They also show that police and the prosecution lost or destroyed evidence that could potentially exonerate Glossip. And they show that police inexplicably did not question potentially important witnesses or search obvious places for evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, however, Glossip\u2019s life likely turns upon whether Kavanaugh and Barrett are moved by the procedural arguments pressed by the Court\u2019s right flank, or by the arguments pressed by both Glossip and the state: That four words in Smothermon\u2019s notes reveal a serious constitutional violation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n