Richard Glossip, a former death row inmate in Oklahoma whose decades-long challenge to his conviction prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his execution and grant him a new trial, was released from prison on Thursday for the first time in nearly 30 years.<\/p>\n
Mr. Glossip was convicted in 1998<\/a> of arranging the murder of Barry Van Treese, his employer and the owner of a motel in Oklahoma City. Prosecutors argued that Mr. Glossip promised the motel handyman, Justin Sneed, $10,000 to kill Mr. Van Treese.<\/p>\n But two independent investigations found that critical evidence had been withheld and that the testimony of Mr. Sneed, the state\u2019s star witness, was faulty, throwing Mr. Glossip\u2019s guilt into question. The State of Oklahoma had set execution dates for Mr. Glossip nine times before the Supreme Court ordered a retrial last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s overwhelming, but it\u2019s amazing at the same time,\u201d he told reporters<\/a> on Thursday afternoon as he walked out of the jail with his wife.<\/p>\n Judge Natalie Mai of the District Court of Oklahoma County issued an order<\/a> on Thursday setting Mr. Glossip\u2019s bond at $500,000. He must wear an electronic monitoring device and cannot contact any witnesses in the case. He also submitted to a pretrial monitoring program and will not be able to travel outside Oklahoma.<\/p>\n Donald Knight, a lawyer for Mr. Glossip, said that the ruling was unexpected but that it provided a step forward in his client\u2019s efforts to escape a \u201cdecades-long nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI suspect he\u2019s going to be overwhelmed for quite some time,\u201d Mr. Knight said in a phone interview. \u201cYou don\u2019t almost get killed nine times by the state, or have three last meals \u2014 you don\u2019t have that happen to you without it really, really scarring you.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Glossip\u2019s initial conviction was overturned in 2001 because of ineffective defense counsel. He was convicted again in 2004 and again sentenced to death.<\/p>\n In 2015, he was granted a stay of execution shortly before he was scheduled to be put to death after he and two other inmates argued that Oklahoma\u2019s lethal injection protocol was unconstitutional<\/a>. The Supreme Court then granted another stay in 2023.<\/p>\n During Mr. Glossip\u2019s more than 20 years on death row, the Supreme Court has considered six petitions from him seeking review of his case and has granted two. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld<\/a> his conviction in 2023, despite the state\u2019s insistence that sentencing Mr. Glossip to death would have been an unthinkable error.<\/p>\n State lawmakers in Oklahoma, as well as celebrities like Kim Kardashian, had called for Mr. Glossip to receive clemency or a new trial. Mr. Knight said a group of Mr. Glossip\u2019s supporters had helped raise the money for his bond.<\/p>\n Attorney General Gentner Drummond of Oklahoma, a Republican, had also asked the Supreme Court<\/a> to throw out Mr. Glossip\u2019s 2004 conviction and order a retrial.<\/p>\n