Nothing is Certain Except Death and Taxes

After three last meals and two marriages, it might be time to let Richard Glossip off Death Row. We simply cannot keep feeding this convicted murderer last meals at the expense of Oklahoma taxpayers.

Glossip has been on Death Row stemming from a death sentence he received in a 1997 murder-for-hire scheme. Somehow, he’s still here eating well, even after the Supreme Court rejected his challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal injection process nine years ago.

 The latest complication in Glossip’s case is Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General joining him in seeking to overturn his murder conviction and death sentence.

As someone who skews a bit socially liberal, I see the death penalty as immoral and a violation of one of the most basic human rights: the right to life. It’s also complicated and flawed by nature, with the presence of potential mistrials, lack of evidence, and the ever-present possibility of a wrongful conviction. But this is not why I want to see Richard Glossip off Death Row.

I also tend to skew a bit fiscally conservative, and I find it appalling that the good people of Oklahoma have paid for not one, not two, but THREE final meals for Glossip over the last 20 years. At a certain point—guilty or not—we cannot continue to feed this man steak and lobster while the state goes back and forth on the legitimacy of his death sentence.

How deep Richard’s involvement in his boss’s murder-for-hire plot might be up for debate, but what is not is the inalienable fact that hanging around having multiple last meals is a real dick move.