Ian Woods - Surviving Execution: A Miscarriage of Justice and the Fight to End the Death Penalty

About the author

Ian Woods has worked for Sky News since 1995, including spells as Sports Editor, United States Correspondent, and Australia Correspondent. He is currently a Senior Correspondent reporting both domestic and international news. Surviving Execution is his first book.

For my son, Oscar

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

WHOS WHO

Oklahoma 201516

Richard Glossip: death-row inmate

Justin Sneed: convicted killer

Kim Van Atta: friend of Glossip

Don Knight: Glossips attorney

Sister Helen Prejean: anti-death-penalty campaigner

Anita Trammell: warden, Oklahoma State Penitentiary

Mary Fallin: Governor of Oklahoma

Alex Weintz: Governors spokesman

Scott Pruitt: Oklahoma Attorney General

David Prater: District Attorney, Oklahoma County

Robert Patton: Director, Oklahoma Department of Corrections

Terri Watkins: Communications Director, Department of Corrections

Phil Cross: Fox 25 reporter

Ralph Shortey: Oklahoma state senator

Mark Henricksen: Glossip attorney

Kathleen Lord: Glossip attorney

Dale Baich: death-penalty attorney

Bud Welch: father of Oklahoma bombing victim

Randall Workman: former prison warden

Donna Van Treese: widow of murder victim

Billie Jo Boyiddle: Glossips niece

Christina Glossip-Hodge: daughter

Ericka Glossip-Hodge: daughter

Crystal Martinez: friend of Glossip

Susan Sarandon: actress and campaigner

Kim Bellware: reporter, Huffington Post

Cary Aspinwall: reporter, The Frontier

Ziva Branstetter: reporter, The Frontier

Graham Lee Brewer: reporter, The Oklahoman

Marc Dreyer: Pardon and Parole Board chairman

Robert Dunham: Death Penalty Information Center

Oklahoma 19978

Barry Van Treese: motel owner and murder victim

D-Anna Wood: Glossips girlfriend

Cliff Everhart: part-time security man at motel

Billye Hooper: motel receptionist

Bob Bemo: detective, Oklahoma City Police

Bill Cook: detective, Oklahoma City Police

Tim Brown: patrol officer, Oklahoma City Police

Fern Smith: Assistant District Attorney

Wayne Fournerat: defence attorney

Richard Freeman: judge

David McKenzie: attorney

Oklahoma 2004

Lynn Burch: Glossips attorney

Connie Smothermon: Assistant District Attorney

Silas Lyman: Glossips attorney

Wayne Woodyard: Glossips attorney

Twyla Mason Gray: judge

Kenneth Van Treese: brother of murder victim

Prologue

30 September 2015

The banging on doors began just before 3 p.m., the time the condemned man was due to die. More than forty inmates on death row joined the noisy protest as they imagined one of their own being strapped to the gurney, an intravenous tube ready to carry the deadly chemicals into his vein. The din echoed around Unit H of Oklahoma State Penitentiary and into Cell LL adjacent to the death chamber.

Richard Glossip was sitting on his solid concrete bunk, naked apart from his boxer shorts, with a thin blanket around his shoulders to keep him warm. Hed been like this for more than an hour, waiting to be taken on what should have been a short walk to his death.

He ought to have been dead by now. Or at least being prepped for death. His fellow inmates thought he was taking his final breaths, and believed they were giving him a fitting send-off. But the banging subsided and Richard Glossip was still alive.

He wanted to know what was happening, but he also longed to be taken outside. Glossip had spent fifty straightdays in the isolation cells close to the death chamber. All that time he had been deprived of privacy. The light was kept on twenty-four hours a day, so that a guard could watch his every move. It was deemed necessary in case the prisoner tried to harm himself, or, worse, take his own life before the state had the chance to kill him.

Even for a man who had spent the last eighteen years behind bars, the isolation cell was a particular form of torture. All luxuries had been taken away when he was moved here, depriving him of the music he loved to listen to on his MP3 player. Hed already been here longer than the prison authorities had intended.

Two weeks earlier, he had been woken before dawn and taken for a medical examination. He had bantered with the prison staff about the efforts they were making to ensure he was fit to be executed. But three hours before his appointed time, he was granted a reprieve: a fourteen-day stay of execution while an appeal court examined newly submitted evidence about his case.

Two weeks for his lawyers to fight for his life. Two more weeks for Richard Glossip to endure the permanent illumination of his concrete cell. Two more weeks to contemplate what it would be like when the curtains were drawn back and the witnesses to his execution stared at him from behind the glass windows.

I was due to be one of those witnesses, one of six people he had chosen to be with him at the end. On 30 September, we were waiting in another room in the prison, as we had been two weeks earlier. This time it seemed certain the executionwas going to proceed. Word had come from Washington DC that the US Supreme Court had refused to intervene. With all appeals exhausted, it could go ahead as planned.

I had accepted the invitation to be a witness months earlier, as a way of telling Richard Glossips story that of a man being put to death for a murder committed by someone else. My selection had led to arguments; another witness challenged my right to be there, and at one point I thought Glossip would withdraw the invitation. But he kept me on his list. Why did he want a British journalist to watch him die? I had asked him several times if he was sure; there were precious few choices he could make freely. Choosing who should be present at his death was one. I promised to be there, but only if he thought it would help, only if he wanted me there.

As I watched the clock tick ever closer to the time of his death, I was regretting my decision. But it was too late to walk away. This was a story unlike anything I had experienced in more than three decades as a reporter.

And it wasnt over yet.

CHAPTER 1

The Murder

January 1997

The murder victim was found face down, wearing a T-shirt with the slogan Jesus Carried the Cross For Us. Barry Van Treese died in room 102 of the motel he owned, the Best Budget Inn, in Oklahoma City. He had been beaten to death. The murder weapon was never recovered, but his car was found abandoned a short distance away, with tens of thousands of dollars inside.

Television cameramen arrived in time to capture the flashbulbs going off inside the room as the police photographer took pictures of the crime scene. Detectives began to question motel staff and some of the guests. The body had been lying there for around eighteen hours, covered by bedlinen, and the evidence suggested the victim had put up a fight. There was blood all over the floor, walls and door handle, and a bloody handprint on the mattress. The window had been smashed, but there were clear signs of an effort to tidy up. The broken glass had been stacked neatly in a chair, and a shower curtain had been taped over the window so the body could not be seen from outside.

Barry Van Treese was fifty-four years old and owned two motels in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. He lived in Lawton, ninety miles south-west of the state capital, with his wife Donna and their five children aged between five and sixteen. He also had two grown-up children from an earlier marriage. His wife described him as a real-life Santa Claus, whose children loved his bushy white beard and were upset on the one occasion he had shaved it off. He could be gruff, and had a temper, but friends considered him generous.