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Editorial

Countdown to an Execution in Oklahoma

Credit...Rachel Levit

Update: The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday granted a two-week emergency stay of the execution of Richard Glossip to hear new evidence.

At 3 p.m. on Wednesday, the State of Oklahoma plans to execute Richard Glossip in the face of mounting evidence that he is innocent, as he has argued all along.

Mr. Glossip was convicted of masterminding the 1997 murder of a man named Barry Van Treese, who owned the motel where Mr. Glossip worked. The conviction was based on no physical evidence and relied largely on the testimony of Justin Sneed, the handyman who carried out the brutal killing with a baseball bat. Mr. Sneed is serving a life sentence without parole — a result of a deal he struck with prosecutors in exchange for testifying that he acted under Mr. Glossip’s orders.

The execution was originally scheduled for January, but it was put on hold when the Supreme Court agreed to consider a claim, brought by Mr. Glossip and other death-row inmates, that Oklahoma’s lethal-injection drug protocol would cause them severe pain and suffering. The court ruled against the inmates in June, and Oklahoma immediately rescheduled Mr. Glossip’s execution.

This case pretty well sums up the state of the death penalty in America. Supporters like to say it is reserved for the “worst of the worst,” but that is demonstrably untrue. It is more accurate to say that capital punishment is arbitrary, racist and meted out to those without the resources to defend themselves.

That was the conclusion of Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, who stopped all executions this year because of his concerns over “the accuracy and fundamental fairness” of the state’s death sentencing system. Mr. Wolf pointed out a fact that is true for the whole country: Poor people and minority defendants are more likely to be charged with capital offenses, particularly when the victim is white.

And then there is the steady stream of exonerations of people who had been sentenced to death since 1973 — 155 and counting, with five in 2015 alone. Only last week, an Alabama man was released after nearly 10 years, a third of that time on death row. Montez Spradley was originally sentenced to life in prison by a jury, but the judge overrode that verdict and sentenced him to death. As in the Glossip case, there was no physical evidence and the prosecution relied on the testimony of a tainted witness.

Bad lawyering is behind most death sentences, and Mr. Glossip’s case is no exception. His first lawyer failed to introduce, among other things, Mr. Sneed’s videotaped confession, during which police interrogators threatened him and said it “is definitely going to be better for you” to testify against Mr. Glossip.

An appeals court threw out the conviction, finding that the case against Mr. Glossip was “extremely weak” and that his lawyers were ineffective. In 2004, he was convicted by a second jury, which also did not see the Sneed confession. At least one juror has stepped forward to say that had this and other information been presented at trial, the vote would have been different.

Last year, Mr. Sneed’s daughter wrote to the parole board to say she believes Mr. Glossip is innocent. Her father testified the way prosecutors wanted only to save his own life, she wrote, and would recant now but is afraid of losing his plea deal.

The Oklahoma County prosecutor, David Prater, has called the efforts to exonerate Mr. Glossip a PR campaign. That’s a remarkably dismissive thing to say when a man’s life is at stake. This case is yet another reminder that the death penalty — in addition to being immoral and ineffective — has already taken innocent lives, and as long as it exists it is likely to take more.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 26 of the New York edition with the headline: Countdown to an Execution . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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