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Richard Glossip To Be Executed Despite Obvious Innocence, All Available Evidence

It could happen to you.

I have to think one of the most horrifying things in the world must be to be imprisoned or executed for a crime you didn't commit, particularly in a situation where it is clear to anyone with half a brain that you didn't do it.

With Richard Glossip, there really isn't even a question. Factually, he did not kill anyone and no one has ever said he did. The only evidence against him is the fact that a meth head said, after being told by police that he would be executed unless he said Glossip "hired" him to kill motel owner Barry Van Treese, that Glossip "hired" him to kill motel owner Barry Van Treese.

Earlier this month, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond — a Republican even, a Republican in Oklahoma — recommended that Glossip's conviction be vacated, largely on the grounds that executing a blatantly innocent human being would be pretty bad PR for the death penalty. There was hope, for a moment, that not only would Glossip not be executed, but that he would actually be able to get out of prison and finally get a fair trial.

PREVIOUSLY: Oklahoma AG Moves To Vacate Conviction Of Obviously Innocent Death Row Inmate Richard Glossip

New Evidence Makes Death Row Inmate Richard Glossip Look Even More Innocent

Obviously Innocent Richard Glossip Gets Stay Of Execution

That hope has now been dashed, as the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has rejected Drummond's recommendation and determined that Glossip must be executed in May.

Via AP:

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Trump

The Devil's Advocates of Easter

It's your Post-Arraignment Sunday show rundown!

This year, instead of the rise of a zombie messiah, we had some other things appear on Easter. So let's dive right into the Sunday shows and marvel at these very undesirable peeps.

Trusty The Clown

We briefly mentioned one of Donald Trump's lawyers, James Trusty, last week. But he really grabbed our attention in his appearance's this week on NBC's "Meet The Press" and ABC's "This Week."



Trusty, who's representing Trump in his whole dragon-like documents hoarding case, tried to defend his client by using a defense that he clearly won't make in court. Trusty kept trying to make a false equivalence between Trump's lying, hoarding, and obstruction versus President Joe Biden's transparent attempts at cooperation regarding classified documents.

It was so ludicrously stupid, in fact, that Chuck Todd's long dead journalistic spirit rose briefly from its grave.

TODD: [...] In this case, not only is he [Trump] not cooperating, he is actively not cooperating. And, again, he did not comply with the subpoena. That’s – the end of the day, that’s the obstruction charge. Why didn't he comply with the subpoena? There was a subpoena for all classified documents. He did not comply with the subpoena. He was caught not complying with the subpoena because of the — the search warrant ending up turning up more classified documents. How do you explain him defying a subpoena?

TRUSTY: Chuck, the Democratic narrative, which you're touting right now to try to draw a distinction —

TODD: It's just a set of facts.

TRUSTY: Well, let me finish. Let's —

TODD: I mean, why call it a Democratic narrative? It's a set of facts.

TRUSTY: Because you're ignoring —

TODD: He defied a subpoena.

TRUSTY: You’re ignoring a set of facts. Let's talk about Delaware. You've got a vice president that has documents for decades in these — in this Chinese-funded Penn Biden Center, right? You've got absolute obstruction there because we don't even have any sort of —

TODD: How is that obstruction?

TRUSTY: Because he had no right to have those documents. He didn't have any ability —

TODD: Right. And did he refuse to turn them over when he found them?

TRUSTY: Well, I don't know. It was hidden for so many months.

I'm not an attorney, though Wonkette has some very brilliant ones who write for us, but I'm pretty sure that "but they broke the law, too" might not be a great defense in court. But to answer Trusty's very dumb question: No, Biden did not refuse to turn anything over and has been as cooperative as possible with NARA to comply with proper archiving and record keeping. That, in essence, is the difference. Because as much as Trump likes mentioning Nixon's $18 million payment for records, which Todd also pointed out he said in that Sean Hannity interview, the former president and his lawyers seem to miss the lesson from Watergate: The cover-up is always worse than the crime.

On "This Week," Trusty was asked about Trump's targeting of the judge's family overseeing his case and tried to excuse it.

TRUSTY: I don’t have any experience with this judge, and, again, my practice as somebody who has been in the criminal justice lane for about 35, 36 years is to not, you know, jump on to any bandwagon when it comes to criticizing. I think the criticisms of the family were not something personal. It was pointing that they have a bias. That they have a political interest that is contrary to President Trump’s.

If Trusty wants to talk about biases and political conflicts involving judges, we have a neat story involving some Nazi memorabilia. That said, considering his zealot followers and that whole case involving a certain day in January 2021, maybe it would be best if a criminal defendant did not put innocent people in harm to intimidate a judge.

Lowering The Barr Again

ABC's "This Week" with Jonathan Karl had on Bill Bar, the former attorney general and the answer to "what would happen if Carl Fredricksen became evil like his idol?"



If you are feeling deja vu from last week, it's understandable. Barr even tried making the same point again about the New York state case being a political prosecution.

BARR: Well, it's a crime — falsifying a business record is a crime if it is part of a fraudulent scheme, if it was a fraud, it was committed in the course of fraud. And I don't see anywhere specified in here exactly what the fraud was.

Based on this and his Mueller Investigation summary, are we sure Barr has decent reading comprehension?

Unlike Trusty, Barr could at least point out the obvious bad strategy of criticizing/targeting the judge and prosecution on his case.

BARR: I don't think it’s appropriate or wise. I mean, the president is notoriously -- lacks self-control and he frequently gets himself into trouble with these midnight tweets and other things. The thing with the baseball bat, for example, was very imprudent of him to do in the middle of the night, and, you know, these are gratuitous comments and aren’t particularly helpful. [...] the president, unfortunately, has a penchant for engaging in reckless and -- and self-destructive behavior that brings these kinds of things on him. In many respects, he is his only -- he's his own worst enemy. [...] And also on the January 6th stuff. That was reckless behavior that was destined to end up being investigated. So it doesn't surprise me that he has all of these legal problems.

If only there was a warning sign that Trump did not respect the Constitution or the law and that anyone who assisted him made it worse ...

But if you think Barr cares for our country, it's made clear his real fear is the idiocy of the Republican base.

BARR: [...] I think part of the reasoning behind it is that they know this is a red flag to a big portion of Trump's base. And that they're going to rally to him because they feel that this is persecution. And that will strengthen Trump's hand throughout the process. I also think though, as far as the general election is concerned, it will gravely weaken Trump. He is already, I think, a weak candidate that would lose. But I think this sort of assures it.

The prospect of Republican primary voters continuing to elect the worst general election candidates is honestly the most schadenfreude ending for a political party's viability since the Whigs.


Have a week.

Criminal Justice System

If Pardoning People Who Kill Black Lives Matter Protesters Is Wrong, Greg Abbott Doesn't Want To Be Right

If only he could pardon some people who aren't actually guilty.

James Reyos has been in prison since 1983, convicted of having killed the priest who raped him. It took until 2022 for investigators to actually test fingerprints found at the scene, belonging to the actual murderers. He's still in prison waiting to hear back from a judge.

Garland "Butch" Martin was convicted of killing his entire family in a house fire that occurred while he was out of town. The techniques used to investigate the fire have since been discredited, and it is highly likely that the fire occurred spontaneously and not as a result of arson. He, too, is still in prison, waiting to hear back from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Nine years after the body of sex worker Bobbie Sue Hill was found in a creek in Parker County, Texas, a witness to the crime was put under hypnosis and gave a description of the killer to a sketch artist. The sketch, which looked entirely different from sketches drawn at the time, was then "aged" nine years and ended up looking like a guy named Larry Driskell. Driskell was brought in for questioning by Texas Rangers and kept in custody for several days until he eventually "confessed." His "confession" did not match details of the crime and he rescinded it almost immediately afterwards, but he was nevertheless taken into jail and kept there for two and a half years until he finally agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a 15-year sentence. The Innocence Project of Texas has since successfully convinced the Parker County District Attorney’s office to at least test some of the crime scene evidence for DNA ... and I guess we'll see how that one will turn out.

Those are the stories of just three of the people who are in prison in Texas for crimes they almost definitely did not commit. Unlike these men, we know for a fact that Uber driver/US Army Sergeant Daniel S. Perry killed 28-year-old Garrett Foster at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Austin, Texas in 2020.

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Criminal Justice System

Oklahoma AG Moves To Vacate Conviction Of Obviously Innocent Death Row Inmate Richard Glossip

PHEW.

On January 7, 1997, just outside of Oklahoma City, a 19-year-old maintenance worker with a meth problem named Justin Sneed brutally murdered Barry Van Treese, the owner of the Best Budget Inn where he worked. He then went to the room of Richard Glossip, the live-in manager of the motel, told him some story about drunks breaking a window, and then said that he killed Van Treese. Glossip thought Sneed was fucking with him and went back to sleep. But the next morning, Van Treese's body was found at the foot of the waterbed in Room 102.

Detectives Bob Bemo and Bill Cook, who interviewed Glossip after the body was discovered, didn't like his attitude, so when they finally brought Sneed in, they more or less told him that he could escape the death penalty if he said that Glossip hired him to do it. There is actual video footage of this. Sneed, being a meth addict, came up with a bizarre and convoluted story about how Glossip had pressured him for months to kill Van Treese — both because Glossip was "embezzling" money from the motel (he was not) and because he thought if Barry Van Treese were dead, Mrs. Van Treese would put Glossip in charge of all of the motels they owned and let Sneed run one as well. Sneed, who regularly stole from visitors at the motel to feed his drug habit, said that Glossip told him that if he murdered Van Treese, they could split the money Van Treese had with him in his car.

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