Just minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion granting Richard Glossip a new trial, his attorney Don Knight started receiving an avalanche of texts. “My phone blew up, my email blew up,” Knight said. By the time he spoke to his client on the phone, Glossip had already heard the news. His wife Lea had read the opinion to him over the phone: The court had ruled that Oklahoma City prosecutors failed to correct the false testimony of their star witness against Glossip and that his conviction and death sentence could not stand. “Because the prosecution violated its obligations,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the court’s majority, “we reverse the judgment below and remand the case for a new trial.”

The opinion was a stinging rebuke to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, which has repeatedly rejected Glossip’s appeals despite mounting evidence of his innocence in the 1997 murder of motel owner Barry Van Treese. The ruling is also a major victory for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who had previously taken the extraordinary step of asking the OCCA to vacate Glossip’s conviction after he concluded that it had been fatally tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. Finally, it is a momentous victory for Glossip, who has been scheduled for execution nine times and has been served three last meals, as well as for Knight who has spent the last decade fighting to free his client.

“Rich Glossip, who has maintained his innocence for 27 years, will now be given the chance to have the fair trial that he has always been denied.”

Glossip’s case will ultimately be sent back to Oklahoma City where the elected district attorney will have to decide whether Glossip should be retried. If she declines to do so, Glossip could soon walk out of prison.

“Today was a victory for justice and fairness in our judicial system,” Knight said in a statement. “Rich Glossip, who has maintained his innocence for 27 years, will now be given the chance to have the fair trial that he has always been denied.”

Glossip was twice convicted and sentenced to die for the murder of Van Treese inside a seedy Best Budget Inn on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. No physical evidence linked Glossip, the motel’s live-in manager, to the crime. The case against him was based almost entirely on the testimony of a 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed, who admitted to bludgeoning Van Treese to death but insisted it was Glossip’s idea. In exchange for testifying against Glossip, Sneed escaped the death penalty and was sentenced to life without parole.

At trial, prosecutors portrayed Sneed — a chronic drug user prone to........

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