#BREAKING - Oklahoma’s execution today of Richard Glossip (photographed behind bars below) has been halted within only hours of his scheduled death by lethal injection.
Glossip and thousands of supporters, including actress Susan Sarandon, had been trying for weeks to have the date set aside so he could prove he’d been framed.
He was convicted twice of killing his employer Barry Van Treese in 1997 solely on the tainted testimony of the actual confessed killer, Justin Sneed, then sentenced to die for capital murder while Sneed was given only life.
Much of the new evidence an appeals court permitted prisoner Glossip’s attorneys an opportunity to introduce at a new hearing will be centered around Sneed’s numerous confessions to fellow prisoners that he acted alone.
Sneed plea bargained with prosecutors in the late 1990s to avoid the death penalty by offering them testimony implicating Richard Glossip in a murder-for-hire scheme that, due to Glossip’s limited resources, has always sounded farfetched.
The reprieve to reargue his case and prove his innocence is good for only two weeks though -- Glossip’s execution has been rescheduled for September 30, 2015.
