Judge grants retrial in '70s Oklahoma murder case

OKLAHOMA COUNTY, Okla. (KFOR) - An district judge has decided an Oklahoma man will get a new trial for a murder dating back to the 1970s.

On Wednesday, Oklahoma County District Judge Amy Palumbo determined Glynn Simmons will be retried for the murder of Carolyn Sue Rogers.

He will also be released on a medical OR bond.

Simmons' defense team has asked the judge to toss out Simmons' conviction outright.

The Oklahoma County District Attorney‘s office has asked to vacate the sentence and set a date for a new trial, saying the State failed to turn over significant exculpatory evidence to the defense, as required by law.

The evidence in question was a police report that appears to show multiple line-ups and an eyewitness who may have identified suspects other than Simmons and Roberts.

Judge Palumbo told the court during an evidentiary hearing in April, “Mr. Simmos was charged with this crime before I was even born. It sure would have been nice for The State of Oklahoma to have confessed to this error before now.”

The video below is from KFOR reporting in April 2023.

The Edmond Liquor Store Murder

On December 30, 1974, two suspects robbed the Edmond Liquor Store. In the commission of the robbery, two women were shot.

The store’s clerk, Carolyn Sue Rogers, died as a result of her injuries.

A customer in the store, Belinda Brown, was wounded but survived.

“It was a big deal because Edmond had only recently begun to have any homicides,” former Edmond Police Detective Gary Carson told KFOR in 2003. “I had helped process the crime scene myself, and there was little if any usable evidence came from the crime scene.”

Police interviewed Brown three days after the crime when she was in the hospital, recovering from a gunshot wound to the head.

“I think she was just in a state of shock and just glad to be alive,” Jim Garr, a composite sketch artist said in 2003, talking about his interview with Brown in 1975. “It was difficult to get details from her, but I think we got enough that we were finally able to get enough to come up with a composite sketch.

Ultimately, then-Oklahoma County District Attorney Curtis Harris charged Don Roberts, of Oklahoma City, and Glynn Simmons, of Louisiana, with the murder of Carolyn Sue Rogers.

The Trial

Simmons and Roberts were tried at the same time in a jury trial that took just two-and-a-half days.

Roberts and Simmons were both represented by public defenders. Simmons’ attorney, Henry Floyd, was later disbarred after officials cited more than 50 courtroom complaints against him.

There was no physical evidence introduced at the preliminary hearing or trial.

In fact, the only evidence was the eyewitness account of Belinda Brown. Another witness in the case refused to point the finger at Simmons and Roberts in court.

“[The jury] relied on eyewitness testimony. But now we’ve seen that’s not always the best [evidence,]” said then-Oklahoma County Assistant District Attorney Dan Murdock, who tried the case against Simmons and Roberts.

The jury ultimately sentenced Don Roberts and Glynn Simmons to death by electrocution. Both men were 22 years old when they were convicted.

In 1978, their death sentences were modified to life in prison following a change to state law.

Life Behind Bars

Don Roberts served 33 years behind bars before he was granted parole at the age of 55.

Simmons has been in prison ever since. His parole has been denied multiple times.

Simmons has served 48 years behind bars for a crime he says he didn’t, and couldn’t, commit.

Prosecutors painted Simmons as the man who pulled the trigger.

“I was born left-handed. And at 8-years-old, I got my right hand trigger finger cut off,” said Simmons, showing KFOR his hand.

Seven alibi witnesses testified Simmons was in Harvey, Louisiana on the night of the Edmond Liquor Store Murder.

Simmons’ childhood friend, Myron Francis, testified Simmons spent the Christmas and New Year holiday in Louisiana in 1974, and did not travel to Oklahoma until mid January of 1975.

Francis told the court he purchased Simmons’ airline ticket and drove him to the airport.

Call for New Trial

In April 2023, Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna filed a motion, asking a judge to vacate Simmons' sentence and order a new trial - more than 45 years after the first trial.

“There’s two police reports that the federal court found that weren’t turned over. There’s a police report that was entered on Feb. 10, 1975 and it talked about the events that happened on Feb. 7, 1975 and Feb. 8, 1975. At that time, the Edmond Police Department conducted a line up with the only witness that actually identified Mr. Simmons at trial. And there’s some questions about what happened during the course of that line up. And the way that the police report is written, it could be questioned whether the witness identified a certain subject or subjects, and so because of that, it becomes, in our mind, a question of whether Mr. Simmons did receive a fair trial,” said Oklahoma County Assistant District Attorney Brant Elmore.

Since that report wasn’t made available to Simmons’ attorneys at the time, they are calling for a new trial.

However, the District Attorney's office believes the outcome would be the same.

“We don’t think that there is any new evidence that’s been presented to us that would show that Mr. Simmons is factually innocent of this murder,” Behenna said.