Richard Glossip’s attorney, Don Knight, answers questions for the media outside Oklahoma State Penitentiary in September. DYLAN GOFORTH/The Frontier
An attorney for death row inmate Richard Glossip says he plans to help his client answer questions from a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” online chat, though Oklahoma prison inmates do not have internet access.
Attorney Don Knight posted Wednesday evening on Reddit that he “will be collecting some of your questions for Richard to answer himself” through a telephone call with a reporter from Reddit’s Upvoted site.
“Because of the constraints” involved in communicating with inmates on death row at Oklahoma State Penitentiary, Knight wrote that he planned to help Glossip “answer a handful” of Reddit user’s questions during the phone call.
There were nearly 2,000 comments and questions posted on the thread by Thursday morning.
Glossip’s death sentence has been the subject of intense scrutiny and media coverage, as he was hours away from execution in September when prison officials realized they had the wrong drug for part of the process.
It was the second time the state had fed him his last meal and the third time he had been brought within hours of execution, in a death sentence that has been mired in controversy.
Richard Glossip
Glossip and his advocates have vehemently proclaimed his innocence in media formats ranging from Reddit chats to appearances on the Dr. Phil show with actress Susan Sarandon and Sister Helen Prejean, the death penalty abolitionist nun played by Sarandon in “Dead Man Walking.”
They’ve argued Glossip’s conviction for the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese hinges solely on the testimony of the man convicted of carrying out the beating death, Justin Sneed.
Sneed maintains he told the truth about Glossip hiring him to kill Van Treese at two separate trials, and prosecutors say there is other evidence linking Glossip to his role in the killing.
Glossip’s case has become a lightning rod for those who see his sentence as proof of a flawed death penalty process, and Oklahoma’s inability to properly carry out lethal injections as evidence the system needs reforming.
Questions and comments from Reddit users ranged the gamut, many asking Glossip whether his case had changed his own views on the death penalty.
Others debated the evidence in his case and the strategy used by his attorneys over the past few months.
And in true Reddit “Ask Me Anything” fashion, readers remarked that both of the convicted killers’ names sounded like Dr. Seuss characters or Victorian-era villains.
The thread is still open for readers to submit questions. Knight has not yet said what time he expects Glossip to be able to answer via phone.
Officials at the Oklahoma Department of Corrections have not yet responded to a question from The Frontier about whether inmates at OSP are allowed to participate in Reddit chats under the agency’s policies.
