Glossip v. Oklahoma

Majority — Sotomayor

Joined by: Roberts, Kagan, Kavanaugh, Jackson

The majority held that the prosecution committed a Napue violation because the record clearly showed that witness Justin Sneed falsely testified he had never seen a psychiatrist and did not know why he was given lithium, when in fact a jail psychiatrist had diagnosed him with bipolar disorder and prescribed lithium to treat it. The Court reasoned that the lead prosecutor almost certainly knew this testimony was false, pointing to pretrial notes showing Sneed had mentioned "lithium" and "Dr. Trumpet" (meaning Dr. Trombka, the jail's only psychiatrist) in a private conversation with her before trial. The majority further held that the false testimony was material — meaning there was a reasonable likelihood it affected the jury's verdict — because Sneed was the only direct evidence of Glossip's guilt, so his credibility was everything; a mid-trial correction by the prosecutor would have revealed to the jury that Sneed was willing to lie under oath, and the hidden bipolar diagnosis would have undermined the prosecution's central theory that Sneed was a passive, harmless person who only acted at Glossip's direction. The Court also rejected the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals' reasoning that the defense "should have known" about the lithium issue, emphasizing that the constitutional duty to correct false testimony falls on the State, not the defense. Finally, the majority found it had jurisdiction to hear the case because the state court's procedural ruling depended on its prior conclusion that no federal constitutional error had occurred — making the procedural bar intertwined with, not independent of, federal law.

Dissent reasoning

Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Alito (and joined by Justice Barrett on the remedy sections), argued the Court stretched the law at every step to reach its preferred outcome. On jurisdiction, the dissent contended the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals clearly relied on an independent state procedural rule — Oklahoma's Post-Conviction Procedures Act — that bars successive post-conviction applications unless the defendant meets strict diligence and actual-innocence requirements, and that the majority invented a "federal holding" the state court never actually made. On the merits, the dissent argued that Sneed's testimony about his lithium prescription was not material under Napue because the defense had known about Sneed's mental health condition since 1997 and made a conscious strategic choice not to use it at the second trial; since the defense never raised the issue, the false testimony had no work to do and could not have affected the verdict. The dissent also argued the majority redefined Napue's materiality standard in a novel and overbroad way — holding that any false statement becomes material if correcting it might have undermined the witness's credibility, which the dissent said would make the materiality requirement meaningless. On the remedy, the dissent argued the Court had no authority to order a new trial directly, because multiple unresolved questions of Oklahoma state procedural law — including whether the state's higher prejudice standard was met and whether a new trial is even an available remedy at this stage of post-conviction review — had to be addressed by the state court first. The dissent also argued the Court improperly bypassed the victim's family, which had presented a competing interpretation of the prosecutor's notes suggesting they did not show knowledge of Sneed's false testimony at all.