By Kim Bellware and Carly Schwartz for Huffington Post – Jan 27, 2015
OKLAHOMA CITY — Dozens of death penalty opponents gathered in the Oklahoma state Capitol building Tuesday as part of a last-ditch effort to save the life of Richard Glossip, who is scheduled to be executed Thursday.
“Richard Glossip’s case cries out for deeper, moral consideration, because it raises the specter of an actually innocent man being executed for a crime he did not commit, based on the testimony of only one man, the man who actually killed the victim,” Sister Helen Prejean, a nun known for her memoir Dead Man Walking and Glossip’s spiritual adviser, said at a press conference. “Human rights are inalienable. They’re not given by government — and they shouldn’t be taken away.”
Glossip was convicted of first-degree murder in 1998 and subsequently sentenced to death based on the sole testimony of one witness, Justin Sneed, who confessed to beating a hotel owner to death with a baseball bat and claimed that Glossip hired him to do it. In exchange for his testimony, Sneed was spared death row himself and instead sentenced to life in prison.
“It’s a peculiar distortion of justice that the actual killer will likely die of natural causes in a minimum-security prison, while Richard faces death,” Mark Henricksen, one of Glossip’s attorneys, said at the press conference.
Watch a video of Sister Helen Prejean’s speech here
Thank you to The Huffington Post and Rev. Dr. Bruce Prescott of the Oklahoma Faith Network for covering this event.
Tags: oklahoma, Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Richard Eugene Glossip, sister helen prejean
