Richard Glossip Set for Release After Supreme Court Reversal

Oklahoma Judge Natalie Mai granted Richard Glossip bond, ordering electronic monitoring and a curfew, setting the stage for release after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction.

Richard Glossip’s decades-long fight against a death sentence is taking a sharper turn toward freedom, after an Oklahoma judge granted him bond more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction.

On Thursday, Oklahoma County District Judge Natalie Mai set Glossip’s bond at $500,000. In the order, Mai required Glossip to live with his wife, wear an electronic monitoring device, observe a curfew from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., and stay within state lines.

“We are extremely grateful that Judge Natalie Mai has granted Richard Glossip a bond. ” Glossip’s longtime attorney Don Knight wrote in a statement.. “In doing so, she rejected the State’s claim that there is a strong case for guilt.. For the first time in 29 years of being incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. during which he faced 9 execution dates and ate 3 last meals. Mr.. Glossip now has the chance to taste freedom while his defense team continues to pursue justice on his behalf.”

The decision comes after the Supreme Court vacated Glossip’s conviction and death sentence in February 2025. citing false testimony and prosecutorial misconduct.. The court said the record included Sneed’s perjury in Glossip’s retrial and that prosecutors failed to correct the testimony.. The justices also pointed to additional prosecutorial conduct that, in their view, further undermined confidence in the verdict.

For Glossip, the ruling was supposed to end the ordeal that began with his 1990s conviction.. But the legal fight never fully closed.. In June 2025, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who is running for governor, announced he would retry Glossip for first-degree murder.. Glossip has remained in jail since.

The case stems from the January 1997 killing of Barry Van Treese. a motel owner. at the Best Budget Inn on the outskirts of Oklahoma City.. Glossip was twice convicted and sentenced to death for the murder.. A 19-year-old handyman. Justin Sneed. admitted to fatally beating Van Treese with a baseball bat but maintained that Glossip bullied him into doing it.. Sneed is serving a life sentence.

At Glossip’s 1998 trial, prosecutors told jurors that Glossip exploited Sneed’s youth and vulnerability, offering him money to kill their boss so Glossip could take over the motel. “Glossip encouraged, aided and abetted and sent Mr. Sneed off to do his dirty work,” prosecutors said at the time.

Glossip’s case began to unravel soon after he arrived on death row. A video of Sneed’s police interrogation, according to court accounts, raised serious doubt about the state’s narrative by showing coercive questioning by Oklahoma City detectives that pressured Sneed into implicating Glossip.

Glossip’s conviction was overturned twice.. In 2001. the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that his lawyers were ineffective for failing to present the interrogation video at trial.. After that, Glossip was again convicted and resentenced to death in 2004.. More than two decades later, the U.S.. Supreme Court vacated the conviction once again in February 2025.

As the state continued to fight to keep Glossip locked up, Drummond—who took office in 2023—initially broke with predecessors by taking steps to block Glossip’s execution. That posture changed after the Supreme Court’s decision, when Drummond announced the state would seek a retrial.

Since then. Glossip’s lawyers have argued that the legal system should allow him to return to the community while the case moves forward.. At a bond hearing last summer. prosecutors told Oklahoma County Judge Heather Coyle that Glossip was guilty and posed a danger to the public.. Coyle agreed. but later stepped down from the case after Glossip’s attorneys discovered she was close friends with the lead prosecutor from Glossip’s second trial.. Five additional judges subsequently recused themselves because of ties to the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office.

Mai’s latest ruling followed another setback for Glossip’s team.. In April. after a daylong hearing in Oklahoma City. Mai declined to enforce a prior agreement between Drummond and Knight that Glossip’s lawyers had said would have allowed him to be released.. After testimony from Knight and the Oklahoma solicitor general. Mai ruled from the bench that the matter should proceed to trial.

Glossip’s attorneys later argued that. even if Mai believed the agreement could not resolve the case. it still supported bond and release.. In their motion. they pointed to Drummond’s view that Glossip should not remain in custody. writing that the attorney general “did not see Mr.. Glossip as a dangerous individual who should remain incarcerated. ” and did not have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty of murder.

In response. Jimmy Harmon. the chief of the criminal justice division of Drummond’s office. urged Mai not to consider Drummond’s statements when making her decision.. Mai appears to have disagreed.. In her bond order. Mai cited a letter Drummond wrote to the parole board in 2023 in which he expressed his view that the record did not support a first-degree murder conviction.

The judge also said she expected the state to pursue the case vigorously and noted that a retrial should be free of error. adding that the court hoped it would bring closure to Oklahoma residents.. “The Court fully expects that the State will rigorously prosecute its case going forward and the defense will provide robust and effective presentation for Glossip. ” Mai wrote.. “The Court hopes that a new trial. free of error. will provide all interested parties. and the citizens of Oklahoma. the closure they deserve.”

At Glossip’s most recent bond hearing in February, Harmon warned the judge that the state should not be expected to present new evidence at a third trial, saying “The evidence presented will be essentially the same as was presented in the first two trials.”

Sotomayor wrote last year that the evidence relied on at trial had been weakened over time, noting that aside from Sneed, there was no other witness and no physical evidence establishing that Glossip orchestrated Van Treese’s murder.

With Mai’s order in place, Glossip, now 63, is positioned to rejoin the free world for the first time in nearly 30 years, though it remains unclear when he will actually be released.

His wife, Lea, said in a statement: “After everything we’ve been through together over the years, knowing that my husband is finally coming home is a feeling I can’t even begin to describe.”

Glossip’s legal team is preparing to go back to court as it presses for exoneration, with Knight describing the upcoming effort as a trial against a system that the Supreme Court has found to involve serious misconduct by state prosecutors.

“Mr. Glossip is deeply grateful to the many thousands of people who have expressed support for him over the years and now looks forward to the day when he is exonerated and truly free from this decades-long nightmare,” Knight said.

Richard Glossip Oklahoma courts U.S. Supreme Court death penalty bond prosecutorial misconduct Oklahoma Attorney General