Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general agreed with the death row prisoner that he should get a new trial. Oklahoma’s state criminal court disagreed.

The state's highest court upheld a law transferring more control of death penalty cases from local district attorneys to the state attorney general.

The Supreme Court gave an Oklahoma death row inmate a new chance in the high-profile 1997 murder case. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

Richard Glossip’s Supreme Court case became a focal point in the national debate over the death penalty, which critics say is unjust or unfairly applied.

The justices heard arguments in October in a case that produced a rare alliance in which lawyers for Glossip and the state argued that the high court should overturn Glossip’s conviction and death sentence because he did not get a fair trial.