The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Richard Glossip, a man sentenced to die under extraordinarily dubious circumstances, must receive a new trial. The case is Glossip v. Oklahoma.

The Court, which has a 6-3 Republican majority, is often unsympathetic to death row inmates who challenge their conviction or who seek to avoid execution. It’s unlikely that the Glossip case foreshadows a break with this trend, as Glossip brought an unusually strong case to the Supreme Court. Indeed, his case is strong enough that Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, who ordinarily would be tasked with defending Glossip’s conviction, instead argued that Glossip’s trial was so flawed that it violated the Constitution.

In total, five justices — Chief Justice John Roberts, plus Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — voted to grant Glossip a new trial. Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed that Glossip’s constitutional rights were violated, but she would have sent the case to an Oklahoma appeals court instead. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented (Justice Neil Gorsuch was recused).

Many powerful players within Oklahoma raised serious doubts about Glossip’s conviction, and the state produced two investigations laying out the many flaws in the case against Glossip. One investigation, conducted by the law firm Reed Smith on behalf of a group of several dozen state lawmakers, determined that a wide range of errors, destroyed evidence, and police failures “fundamentally call into question the fairness of the proceedings and the ultimate........

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