An Oklahoma death row case is going to the Supreme Court - even though the state agrees he shouldn’t be killed

After 25 years on death row, nine scheduled executions and three “last meals”, Oklahoma inmate Richard Glossip will finally have his wrongful conviction claim heard by the US Supreme Court.

In a long-running legal battle that has pit Oklahoma’s Attorney General Gentner Drummond against the state’s legal establishment, Glossip’s appeal for a new trial will be taken up by the Supreme Court in the fall, according to a decision released on Monday.

Glossip’s latest scheduled execution in May 2023 was stayed by the Court after Mr Drummond made a stunning disclosure: Oklahoma had reached “the difficult decision to confess error and support vacating the conviction of Richard Glossip”.

But after Oklahoma’s highest court declined to throw out the execution last year, and the state parole board was deadlocked on whether to intervene, the Supreme Court was the sole remaining legal avenue open to the condemned man.

Glossip, 60, was sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of his boss, Barry Van Treese, in a room at the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City, which Glossip managed.

The state’s star witness was Justin Sneed, a drug-addled drifter with a lengthy rap sheet who admitted beating Van Treese to death with a baseball bat. Sneed, then 19, was offered immunity from the death penalty in return for his testimony.

Richard Glossip has always maintained his innocence of the 1997 murder of his boss Barry Van Treese

Glossip’s first murder trial in 1998 was plagued with prosecutorial misconduct, and “a cascade of errors and missed opportunities by defence attorneys”, according to a343-page report commissioned by state lawmakers in 2022.

The report stated there was no physical or witness evidence tying Glossip to the killing other than