The Cheat Sheet: Felons and Fairness

[00:00:00] Content Warning, this episode contains discussion of violence and murder, including the murder of two girls. So sometimes when it's up to me to select the cases for an episode of The Cheat Sheet, I try to look for some things around a general theme.

[00:00:18] And today I think the theme that caught my eye was fairness. Everybody always says it's very important that defendants receive a fair trial. But what exactly does that mean? What happens to make the trial unfair?

[00:00:41] And is that something that's clear to everybody or is it sometimes obscure and difficult to puzzle out? Certainly in the abstract, the idea is there's no such thing as a perfect trial. Right, so a fair trial is not a perfect trial. Exactly. Human beings can't do anything perfectly.

[00:01:08] That's just a fact of life. So if there are mistakes made, you have to look at them and say, is this a mistake that plausibly affected the outcome of the trial? And the thing is even lawyers and attorneys can't always agree on the answer to that question.

[00:01:32] It can get pretty complicated. So we're going to look at a couple cases that illustrate that this week on The Cheat Sheet. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet.

[00:01:46] We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet. And this is The Cheat Sheet. Felons and Fairness. So I want to start with a case that actually happened back in the late 90s in Oklahoma.

[00:02:53] And after we talk about it a bit, I will tell you why it's in the news this week. This is the story of the murder of a man named Barry Vantris. He ran the best budget in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

[00:03:12] Now according to prosecutors, he was murdered by a man named Justin Snead at the behest of a man named Richard Glossop. Glossop was an employee of Vantris.

[00:03:28] Supposedly had been stealing funds or there was some financial irregularities that Glossop was afraid might come out and might get him into jail. He was in trouble.

[00:03:43] And so according to authorities, he induced Snead to commit murder with the idea that Glossop would end up paying Snead for this crime. Actually, the details of the case sort of indicate that Glossop had some sort of knowledge about what had happened.

[00:04:02] Back on January 14, 1997, Snead enters room 102 at the hotel and he beats Vantris to death. Glossop goes into the room shortly thereafter to repair a window that had been broken during the attack.

[00:04:20] He doesn't alert authorities or in any way let anyone know that there is a dead man in that room. Subsequently, he seems to be making an effort to keep people from going into that room. He tells the housekeepers who ordinarily would clean the downstairs rooms.

[00:04:45] Don't worry about cleaning those rooms. Me and my friends Snead are going to clean those rooms. So there seems to be an indication. Yeah, that's not good.

[00:04:55] Glossop and Snead go to Vantris's car, which is in a nearby parking lot and retrieve from it an envelope with $4,000 and they split the money. So in any case, investigators pick up on some conflicting statements that Glossop tells them during the investigation.

[00:05:18] They come up with their theory of what's happened. They make a deal with Snead. Snead testifies against Glossop. Snead gets a life sentence with no possibility of parole. Glossop gets sentenced to death.

[00:05:36] And it's important to note that Glossop has always maintained he is innocent and that whatever story Snead is telling should not be relied upon. Does he have an explanation for his bizarre behavior?

[00:05:53] He said he was deceitful because he worried it might look like he was involved in the crime. Yeah, that doesn't fly. Nope. Like sorry. So why this is in the news now is that has come out that at the time of the trial and previously

[00:06:13] Snead who again is the person who actually committed the murder and who was the primary witness against Glossop. Snead was using Lithium. He had been using Lithium. This is a drug used to treat people with mental health issues.

[00:06:33] And so the argument is that if the defense had had an understanding and knowledge that the star witness against them was someone with a history of mental illness at least to the extent that he was using Lithium.

[00:06:51] They may have been able to come up with a different or a better strategy to combat that or to throw his credibility in question with the jury.

[00:07:03] My first question is what do you think? Do you think that fact goes to the fundamental fairness of the trial? Do you feel it's just not a huge error? That doesn't I mean to me. Well, I'm not a mental health professional or a psychiatrist or a scientist.

[00:07:23] So I think I don't feel like I can conclusively say without knowing necessarily the extent of the effects of Lithium on a person. Now, I'll tell you my gut reaction.

[00:07:36] So you said Lithium is used for is there is this is like a specific mental health diagnosis what it's used for Lithium is described as a mood stabilizing medicine to have a bipolar disorder, mania things of that nature.

[00:07:53] Well, okay. So to me, I guess what I what I get concerned about is, you know, is the indication here that somebody who has a mental illness should inherently be considered untrustworthy. Right? I don't think that that's necessarily a great a great argument.

[00:08:14] I think if there's evidence that somebody is in the in full swing in a manic episode or a psychotic episode, then that should be brought up. So I guess I have two minds about it. I understand where the defense is coming from with this.

[00:08:28] But I also wonder, like again, is the implication that because someone happens to have bipolar disorder, they can never be believed because it's not like they're saying any aspect of his story. Oh, this is problematic. They're just saying he was on lithium that inherently is a problem.

[00:08:44] The other thing is I wonder if there's something if there's side effects about taking lithium that would make somebody less trustworthy. Then that seems like it could be a good argument for the defense.

[00:08:54] Like, oh, it does make you make stuff up or lie or we're going to some sort of psychotic state. I can tell you that poor memory is seen as a side effect of lithium, not a common side effect, but it is a side effect.

[00:09:09] Okay. I don't know. It seems I don't know that that's I don't know if I see that is enough of a push to throw out the trial. That's just me personally. But I would defer to the court on that one.

[00:09:28] I know that Glossop has gotten a lot of attention from the anti-death penalty crowd over the years and he's often talked about as if he's just factually innocent. And from what you described, that sounds like it may not be the case in my opinion.

[00:09:42] But at the same time, I think I just want to say just like as a side thing, I think it's unfortunate that in the United States, the being anti-death penalty seems to often mean, oh, this guy couldn't have done anything wrong.

[00:09:57] Like, why can't why can't why can't there be some nuance of like just because they did this, they shouldn't be given the death penalty? Maybe we should abolish the death penalty.

[00:10:08] I don't understand. It's like in America, there's such a there's such like a moral standard that you have to know. No, no, no, like he's totally innocent. You know, I mean, if he was guilty, fry him, but he's totally innocent. So you can't do it.

[00:10:22] Here's some nuance. The attorney general of Oklahoma, this is a man named Gettner Drummond. He is a Republican. He believes the Glossop is guilty. Guilty is charged, guilty as convicted. But he doesn't believe he should be executed.

[00:10:40] He says that in his view, because of this fact, because the lithium, because the lithium issue Glossop did not get a fair trial. Here's a statement he made public confidence in the death penalty requires the highest standard of reliability.

[00:10:57] So in other words, if we're going to execute people, we need to be really, really certain that everything is fair and reliable.

[00:11:04] So what's interesting is this, this issue actually went to the Oklahoma Court of Appeals, where we have the attorney general of the state saying we should execute this person. And the Oklahoma Court of Appeals said, well, just because the attorney general says that, that's not enough. That's surprising.

[00:11:27] They say it has to be based in facts or law and law. Okay. Well, actually, that may be not surprising.

[00:11:32] You don't want people who happen to be in an elected position or appointed position or whatever to be able to say something and make pronouncements, which are then acted upon regardless of what the law says.

[00:11:48] So one of the standards is you don't want defense attorneys to be able to say, oh, I kind of know about this issue at trial, but I'm not going to pursue it because then later on, I would have,

[00:12:02] I would have a weapon in my arsenal for an appeal where I could say, oh, I didn't know about this. Does that make sense? Yeah, you don't want, yeah, that makes sense.

[00:12:11] You want them to be motivated to exercise due diligence, do all the work necessary to do the best defense possible.

[00:12:20] And you only want to penalize the other side if there's basically, if it's a situation where even if the defense worked really hard and did due diligence and did everything by the book, there's no way they could have known this.

[00:12:36] And the court of appeal said that this information about the lithium was available to previous defense attorneys on the case and these defense attorneys, if they had exercised due diligence, they should have known that.

[00:12:51] And they also point out that at the trial, Snead actually testified that while he was at the county jail, he was given lithium. Oh. And the defense counsel did not question him further on that.

[00:13:08] Now Snead said he didn't know why he was given lithium and apparently that's not true. Apparently he did know. But if you have a person on the stand saying I was given lithium at the jail. He's giving them an opening.

[00:13:21] You have to assume the jail physicians aren't just giving people medication randomly. There has to be a reason for that. Wow. And I think a point that they made, I'm going to read this from their opinion directly.

[00:13:40] It is likely the counsel did not want to inquire about Snead's mental health due to the danger of showing that he was mentally vulnerable to glossips manipulation and control.

[00:13:54] So in other words, they're saying they knew this man had some sort of underlying mental condition and they were worried that if it came out that might actually hurt their client.

[00:14:05] And so we now can't give them a do over on that now that they've decided well actually it'll help us. So yeah, like legally that's just not I don't I don't see how that would that would fly.

[00:14:20] And so is this his last chance to skirt the death penalty? Well, what's happening now is the United States Supreme Court just a couple of days ago have announced that they want to hear this case. They want the lithium issue.

[00:14:36] They want to yeah, they want to figure that out. Are there other elements that could possibly there are other elements I'll get to a pretty important one in a second but the focus seems to be on this lithium issue.

[00:14:50] And so I just find it interesting that not we have a situation where we have responsible people like the Attorney General of the state judges of the Court of Appeals members of the US Supreme Court all saying we're not really sure what's fair or what's not fair.

[00:15:07] And so these issues have to be really argued and discussed in detail. Do you have a feeling at this point just from having read about this that the lithium issue deprived him of a fair trial?

[00:15:21] I think personally I might lean more towards Drummond's level of thinking that we if we're going to execute people we need to be really careful we're doing it the right way.

[00:15:33] Now what's interesting again about all of this is so I found this case on the SCOTUS blog that basically means Supreme Court of the United States blog. The blog is not officially affiliated with the Supreme Court but it covers them pretty well.

[00:15:51] And in their article on this they note that quote the justices also directed gloss up in the state to address a separate question. Whether the ruling by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals rested on an adequate and independent state law ground.

[00:16:08] Specifically the gloss up is not entitled to a leave under state post conviction law which the Supreme Court would lack the power to review. So let me let's go into that. They're basically saying if the Oklahoma Court of Appeals when they ruled against Mr. Glossop.

[00:16:26] If they were able to base that ruling entirely upon state law then the Supreme Court would essentially be powerless here. Because the Supreme Court is more about conflicts between the states and federal laws.

[00:16:44] So what does that mean for the future that the Supreme Court might not be able to take it or what?

[00:16:49] If the Supreme Court gets the materials and research from both sides on this issue and they look at it and they conclude that the Oklahoma Court of Appeals decided this based on Oklahoma law and not federal law then there's no place for us in this matter at all.

[00:17:09] Do we know what they decided it based on? I'm assuming Oklahoma law. Basically this is going to be another thing where lawyers are going to argue both sides because it's not clear.

[00:17:22] I'm sure the people from the state of Oklahoma are going to get up and argue this was based entirely on Oklahoma state law and the people on the other side will say no absolutely not. So the Supreme Court does have the power. That'd be interesting.

[00:17:38] So it's kind of an interesting case because they're taking this case and they're saying we want you to tell us whether or not we were wrong to take this case at all. Right. I'm assuming the execution date is pushed back until after all this is resolved right? Right.

[00:17:59] Because we don't want a federal court to come in and tell a state how to apply its own laws. Right. So they might weigh in or they might not. They might even not cross that jump over that hurdle there. So it's a complicated and interesting case.

[00:18:16] So is there a sense of when the next steps will be in the gloss of case? It looks like arguments are going to be sometime in the fall. So what do you make of it all? Well it seems really complicated.

[00:18:28] Certainly I think the question seems to no longer be about guilt or innocence although I will say that a lot of people who are in the state of Oklahoma are going to be in the state of Oklahoma.

[00:18:35] And I doubt penalty things seem to very much push an innocence narrative. But I tend to think these questions are actually bigger than that.

[00:18:44] It's questions of fundamental fairness and what is fairness, I guess, because on the one hand it sounds like maybe there was an opportunity for the original defense to do something about the lithium thing. So I don't personally know if this crosses the threshold based on that alone.

[00:19:04] But if perhaps higher courts feel it does then it'll be really interesting to see what happens going forward. So now let's move over to Maryland. This is a case involving a woman named Sophia Negreponte.

[00:19:19] If that last name sounds familiar to you as it did to me, it's because her father John Negreponte. Is a prominent government official. He was actually this country's first intelligence director. He was put into that position by former president George W. Bush back in 2005.

[00:19:42] Stories about Sophia Negreponte often point out that she is his daughter, but she is his adopted daughter and that is just something that's always a little bit of a pet peeve of mine because if someone adopts you, you're their daughter. They're their child.

[00:19:59] So I don't know why that distinction is always made. I'm adopted. Those are my parents. Those aren't my qualified parents. Yeah, that's uncomfortable. So this case involves something that happened back in 2020. Sophia Negreponte stabbed to death a friend of hers named Yusuf Rasmussen.

[00:20:24] They were drunk at the time. The trial basically centered on the fact that was her stabbing him, was she deliberately trying to kill him? Or is she maintains, was it basically an accident?

[00:20:45] Her defense attorney tried to convince jurors that she was basically too drunk at the time of the incident to form the intent, the specific intent to choose to kill somebody. There was just basically she got drunk, didn't know what she was doing.

[00:21:04] So during the trial, they, the prosecution played parts of a police interrogation to Ms. Negreponte and that video captures some people including police saying they found her story hard to believe.

[00:21:24] And so what the issue of fairness or lack of fairness there is under our system, it's up to the jury to decide the facts. It's up to the jury to listen to the individual witnesses in a case and decide who to believe and who not to believe.

[00:21:48] And that by having videotapes of people saying we don't believe her, that somehow tainted the jury and had an impact that perhaps was inappropriate. So what do you make of that? I didn't know that. I think that's really interesting.

[00:22:06] My question for you and maybe there's some nuance here. We've all seen interrogation tapes where the officer is going hard at somebody. I don't believe you. I think you're lying to me right now. You need to come clean. Is there a difference between that and what happened here?

[00:22:24] I just don't know. I mean, I'm just wondering if the court sees there being a difference between a really intense interrogation like that where there's accusations of lying and maybe detectives unilaterally outside of the court. And I'm surprised that the interview saying, oh, she's definitely making that up.

[00:22:44] I don't know. Maybe I'm just curious because it would seem like I've seen instances where interviews really involve aggressive questioning and questioning of somebody's credibility and truth telling. So I'm surprised that this is kind of being singled out just because I've seen that so many times.

[00:23:03] But maybe there's a specific issue where those are considered more in the moment of the interview whereas this is just kind of like people unilaterally saying that, you know, in a way.

[00:23:14] I guess I'm curious if you're hypothetically on a jury and you see a videotape where a police officer is expressing strong skepticism of a story that's just offered by a witness. Does that impact how you analyze and process what that witness says?

[00:23:36] To me, I think I would want more. But I can understand how it would impact a lot of people who kind of implicitly trust the police. He wouldn't say that unless he had a reason.

[00:23:49] I tend to think I've seen so many cases go sideways that I would want to see the evidence backing up that rather than just somebody kind of assuming that because it makes me uncomfortable when the police assume things.

[00:24:08] So to me, I'd want to look at he's saying that what does he have to back that up? Otherwise it just, you know, it could just look like somebody jumped to conclusions which I don't think as a juror I would like. The police are like all of us.

[00:24:24] They are human beings. They have experience so maybe they can draw some conclusions with a bit more expertise than us but that doesn't mean that those conclusions are 100% always accurate.

[00:24:33] To me, I think we've done some cases recently where I've kind of come to the conclusion that one of the most dangerous things in a case is police getting blinders on and forming opinions and defending those opinions. You shouldn't be defending an opinion.

[00:24:49] You're not the goalie in a game of soccer. You're not trying to keep the other team from scoring. It should be more like you are looking at the evidence and coming to conclusions based on that.

[00:25:03] If the evidence contradicts an opinion that you formed then that opinion should be seriously reconsidered and recontextualized.

[00:25:12] And I think the best police investigators are led by the evidence, the facts and are certainly not trying to come to a quick conclusion as far as the story they tell themselves about what happened.

[00:25:28] But I guess I'm just confused because we've both reviewed plenty of police interviews where rightly or wrongly. But maybe in some cases rightly like it's like oh no you're definitely lying to me right now here's what really happened.

[00:25:43] And would that be considered inappropriate for a jury in Maryland? I'd be curious if any Maryland attorneys are listening and have a sense of why this would be so particularly problematic just as far as derailing a trial possibly.

[00:25:58] Yeah I'm wondering if there's specific mechanisms that this kind of speaks to and would render the trial unfair. But yeah as a juror I think a lot of people unfortunately uncritically accept one side or the other.

[00:26:13] I think a lot of people are reflexively the police must be telling the absolute truth they'd never do anything or never make a mistake and it's like no.

[00:26:22] And then some people I think are reflexively that way for defense and I think you always just have to be skeptical of everything. Especially statements that are made without any backing evidence. So I should note we found out about that story from an article at newsyahoo.com.

[00:26:41] And now I'm going to tell you about a final case we learned about this one from krk.com and of course we'll have all of these links in our show notes. This story involves a man named Donovan Cuthbertson and get ready to be upset back in September.

[00:27:04] He's accused of shooting and killing a woman named Rachel Crouch in her car. And police allege that when he was arrested for that crime he admitted to having done it. Now because of a paperwork snafu because the prosecutors did not formally file charges within 60 days of his arrest.

[00:27:33] The judge his order that he cannot be kept in custody and must be released. So to be clear he's still going to face a trial and charges they just can't hold him at this time. And so that is an outrageous situation.

[00:27:52] A person plausibly charged with a violent crime is out on the streets. And I think no one can be happy about this except him.

[00:28:05] But it is a situation where if we have rules in place where people need to be charged by a certain number of days and that doesn't happen. We can't start making exceptions because if we start making exceptions the power of the state to hold people indefinitely.

[00:28:23] Yeah that's not a road that should be gone down as egregious as these circumstances are. I mean just file it on time was there was there a good excuse why that didn't happen in this situation?

[00:28:38] Yeah the deadline for filing charges was a day after Thanksgiving when the courthouse was closed. But yeah it seems like this could have been handled a little bit better. Yeah that's outrageous and I feel so bad for her family that just insult to injury.

[00:28:54] We also wanted to give one update about a situation regarding the Delphi case specifically about the leak.

[00:29:01] So we've previously reported that a man named Mark Cohen who's from Texas and is not affiliated with the case in any way other than being one of the people who's highly interested in it in the online community.

[00:29:13] That he sent us on October 5th leak discovery materials so different types of discovery materials including really horrible images of a crime scene involving two children. And so.

[00:29:32] And then he told us and we reported that we were the only ones he sent that to and in our subsequent reporting. We said some kind things about him because we appreciated how he wanted to go to the police and try to plug up the leak.

[00:29:49] And he has since told us that he lied to us so he now says that he sent these discovery materials to a YouTuber days before he sent them to us. And this YouTuber shared them with other YouTubers.

[00:30:07] And so these pictures these awful pictures were actually widely circulate even before we got them and these people who had them.

[00:30:18] And who talk about how much they care about the case and how much they want justice for the girls were exchanging these awful pictures and they were not going to law enforcement to or the defense team or the defense team as far as we know to discuss the fact that there had been this leak.

[00:30:40] Oh but they care so much Kevin. Yeah.

[00:30:43] There's so many people who claim to care about this case and then their behavior completely contradicts that and then you find these are people who some of them criticize us like why would you want to report this to police and now we know why because they were having their fun.

[00:30:57] And then other people were saying oh good job you guys did the right thing. It's like yeah well you didn't now we know that.

[00:31:03] So for what it's worth we know who these YouTubers are law enforcement obviously knows the family knows people know who you are and what you did.

[00:31:16] And so if you're just keep that in mind that if you go out if you're talking about how much you care about the case people involved know the truth.

[00:31:24] And this is a situation where we're not naming people at this point because honestly that would just be a huge boon for their channels.

[00:31:32] But whenever we feel that something we reported on the path that needs to be added context or the extra information given we think it's important to do so.

[00:31:43] Yeah I think in the original episode we phrased it that Mark told us that he hadn't sent them to anyone else.

[00:31:49] We pushed him on this we asked him multiple times have you sent it to other people it seems to be spreading really quickly and he continuously said no no no.

[00:31:58] We felt comfortable reporting what he told us because his name was out there and so we got him on the record saying that but now that he's told us that he told us a lie.

[00:32:06] We will be going back to that episode and adding a note at the top noting hey this is actually not true Mark later told us that he leaked to one other YouTuber.

[00:32:16] And frankly at this point possibly more I don't know I mean now he's saying that there's one additional YouTuber in the mix but at this point when a source burns you to that degree and lies and you report that and then it turns out there was a lie.

[00:32:32] There's not any trust there so I think that's important to state as far as what we should do with the information.

[00:32:40] That being said pretty much nothing else concerns me for that episode in the sense that we have screenshots of his communications with the person he received them from are and those are pretty hard to argue with in that sense.

[00:32:58] So I the fundamentals of that report are solid because they're mostly based on our experience and our review of of the screenshots and our review of what happened.

[00:33:10] They didn't really rely too much on Mark but but the thing that did was his assertion that he hadn't spread them further than he had at that point.

[00:33:21] Obviously when we were reporting it initially and we stress this pretty pretty intently there was you know there had just been an awful situation regarding a person dying for us given how emotionally charged it all was.

[00:33:36] We wanted to engage with a level of empathy and compassion around not not using such can you know condemning language as as maybe we felt we would have been in the right to use that you know that was a conscious choice as far as not making the situation worse by putting emotionally vulnerable people in a worse situation.

[00:33:59] So that's that's the case with Mark and unfortunately he lied to us instead of being completely honest about what happened. And I also want to know that Mark has suggested that I in some way acted as his attorney or his lawyer and that is absolutely not correct.

[00:34:25] That is not the case at all. I never worked as Mark's attorney. I never told him I was his attorney. I was not his attorney.

[00:34:36] And just to give you a sense of how something like this happens in addition so we put out we quoted we essentially quoted Mark in the piece saying no I you know I just sent it to you.

[00:34:48] We chose to accept that we would not have run that had we not had permission to use his name. That's one of those things where like that would not have been an anonymous quote though it would have had to be coming from him.

[00:35:00] So the reason for that is because then the person is sort of on the hook for what they say on your show.

[00:35:06] You know you only use anonymous stuff and confidential sources when you're at you know when you're pretty confident and given that he was involved in this leak I think we only felt comfortable putting his name out there so that if something like this happens it's not like we were just kind of running blind with it.

[00:35:23] The other thing I would say is that in a situation like this with a reporter we don't have the ability like even if he gave us his phone to look through and make sure that he didn't send them to some dumb YouTuber.

[00:35:36] It would be it would be difficult because he could always have a burner phone like you can't you can't necessarily check a negative to that extent and that's why in general in those situations.

[00:35:47] It is important to get the person's name on the record so that there's accountability if something turns out not to be true.

[00:35:55] But anyways we'll be you know we have the announcement here but we also will be editing the original episode to include this information as well at the top so when people go back and listen it's going to be a different version.

[00:36:09] We only alter episodes like that if there's some sort of correction or some sort of additional context that we feel we need to provide later so this is you can look for that in the original episode.

[00:36:19] Probably within the next week or so yeah within the next week or so but this is an announcement and we whenever there's either an error or in this case a misleading statement from a source.

[00:36:30] We want you to know about it we're not going to just sweep that under the rug and hope no one notices we're going to say here's what happened blah blah blah and then you know cracked it in whatever way in the original reporting. Thanks everybody thanks everybody.

[00:36:45] Thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover please email us at murder sheet at gmail.com. If you have actionable information about it unsolved crime please report it to the appropriate authorities.

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