MCALESTER, Okla. — Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) granted clemency to 46-year-old Tremane Wood on Thursday, acting at the last minute to spare from execution a man who was sentenced to death for a killing his brother admitted to committing.
Wood, who has spent more than 20 years on death row, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday morning. His case marks the second time Stitt has commuted a death sentence since entering office in 2019.
“This action reflects the same punishment his brother received for their murder of an innocent young man and ensures a severe punishment that keeps a violent offender off the streets forever,” Stitt said in a statement. An intervention from Stitt was Wood’s last chance of survival, as the Supreme Court declined earlier Thursday to review his case.
“In Oklahoma, we will continue to hold accountable those who commit violent crimes, delivering justice, safeguarding our communities, and respecting the rule of law,” Stitt said. “I pray for the family of Ronnie Wipf and for the surviving victim, Arnie [Kleinsasser]; they are models of Christian forgiveness and love.”
“I’m so, so grateful for everyone who fought so hard and diligently to save my son,” Wood’s mother, Linda Wood, told HuffPost.
“For the first time in months I’m able to breathe,” she said.
Wood’s two sons, Brenden Wood and Tremane Wood Jr., who were prepared to witness the execution, embraced members of Wood’s legal team outside the prison. Brenden Wood, an active-duty member of the military who received only a short leave, drove nearly 18 hours from his posting to the prison in McAlester.
Advocates celebrated the governor’s decision outside the prison on Thursday morning.
“Nothing but joy and thankfulness — thankful for this community that showed up for Tremane, thankful for Governor Stitt for making the right decision, thankful to have Tremane here for another day,” Jasmine Brown-Jutras, a community organizer and family advocate, told reporters.
“Tremane said it: He said, ‘It’s not over till it’s over,’ and it was literally till the last second. Not hearing until 10 a.m. was so hard, but we’re so grateful that the right decision was made and that Tremane is still here with us.”
“We are profoundly grateful for the moral courage and leadership Governor Stitt has shown in granting mercy to Tremane,” Amanda Bass Castro-Alves, one of Wood’s attorneys, said in a statement. “This decision honors the wishes of Mr. Wipf’s family and the surviving victim, and we hope it allows them a measure of peace.”
Reached by phone on Thursday, Barbara Wipf told HuffPost, “No matter what they would have done, it wouldn’t bring Ron back.” Kleinsasser responded to the news with verses from the Bible: “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved). For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”
Jessica Schulberg/HuffPost
As HuffPost chronicled in two previous stories, Wood’s case is marked by allegations that his death sentence was the result of both his severely impaired trial lawyer and prosecutors who played dirty. Despite the common belief that the lengthy appeals process in capital cases ensures that constitutional violations at trial will be rectified before the execution date, Wood had been denied relief at every turn.
Several of the people who helped convict Wood have since come to feel that something went wrong. The jury foreperson, the only Black member of the jury, said she felt pressured into voting for death and would have held out for life if she had had more information about the case. The state’s star witness, who is also the mother of Tremane’s eldest son, told HuffPost she didn’t want Tremane to die. So did the surviving victim of the robbery, as well as the mother of the man who was killed.
In 2002, Wood, his older brother and two women were charged with first-degree murder for killing Wipf during a botched robbery. Wipf died of a single stab wound, but under the state’s so-called felony murder statute, prosecutors didn’t have to prove who actually killed him in order to secure murder convictions — only that they each participated in the robbery that led to his death.
At Wood’s trial, prosecutors argued that he stabbed Wipf — only to flip their story at his brother’s trial the following year and argue that the brother was the killer. Wood, who denied stabbing Wipf, was represented by a lawyer struggling with drug addiction who billed almost no work on the case, and he was sentenced to death. His older brother, who testified that he had killed Wipf, had a competent team of death penalty public defenders, and was sentenced to life without parole. He died by suicide in 2019.
Wood’s lawyer, who died in 2018, admitted to client neglect associated with substance abuse, resulting in him temporarily losing his law license after representing Wood. He also admitted in two sworn statements to doing a poor job on Wood’s case. Two of his former clients had their death sentences thrown out on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel. But courts have repeatedly denied Wood’s appeals for a new trial, citing procedural grounds.
Earlier this year, Wood and his lawyers uncovered evidence that prosecutors lied to jurors at trial about the incentives provided to two of their witnesses in exchange for their testimony. Still, District Judge Susan Stallings denied Wood relief, filing a ruling that matched the version proposed by the state nearly verbatim. In recent weeks, details about the relationship between Stallings and Fern Smith, one of the prosecutors Wood accused of misconduct in his trial, have been revealed.
After law school, Stallings worked for Smith in the Oklahoma district attorney’s office and later cited Smith as a guiding influence in her career. In court proceedings in a separate case, Smith revealed that she and Stallings vacationed together in Spain, Las Vegas and England in the 1990s. Smith also testified that, in May, after Stallings denied Wood relief, she emailed Smith a copy of the ruling that cleared her of misconduct. In the email exchange, which HuffPost has reviewed, Smith praises Stallings’ “thorough analysis and well-reasoned opinion.”
“Which I can’t take credit for. It’s the proposed Findings from the AG’s office,” admitted the judge, who was supposed to be an impartial arbiter between Tremane and the state. “They did do an outstanding job.”
Despite the well-documented issues in Wood’s case, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who is running for governor on a tough-on-crime platform, had taken extraordinary measures to try to ensure Wood’s execution. After requesting a September execution date, Drummond secretly asked Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals Presiding Judge Gary Lumpkin, who was overseeing Wood’s case, to postpone Wood’s execution date to give the attorney general’s office more time to build a criminal case related to contraband phones found in Wood’s cell. After initially entertaining the request, Lumpkin reminded Drummond he could only consider requests made in a court filing. Drummond declined to do so, stating he didn’t want to “tip off Mr. Wood as to the nature of the investigation.”
Before a person is executed in Oklahoma, they have the opportunity to appear at a clemency hearing before the Pardon and Parole board and make their case for mercy. If at least three of the five board members vote in favor of clemency, the governor then has the option to commute the death sentence.
At Wood’s clemency hearing last week, Drummond leaned heavily on the information found on the phones to make the case that Wood deserved to die. He cited texts and photos allegedly recovered from Wood’s phones to accuse him of using and selling drugs, being a gang member, and arranging the beating of another prisoner who Wood said killed his female cousin.
“His pattern of violence and deceit has not ceased, it has merely adapted. The same vicious intent that fueled his original crimes endures today, revealing a hardened, unrepentant mind driven by deceit and a complete disregard for human life,” Drummond stated in the hearing. “The danger remains as clear and present as ever — and no prison, no prison cell will protect society from his evil and ongoing deeds.”
Stalling, Smith and Lumpkin all did not respond to requests for comment on HuffPost’s previous reporting on the case. Drummond’s office previously declined to comment on its handling of the contraband phones but asserted that Wood received a fair trial.
During the hearing, Wood’s lawyer, Bass Castro-Alves, explained to the board the various legal issues in Wood’s case, and the fact that Wipf’s parents and the surviving victim of the robbery oppose Wood’s execution. Wood’s presentation included quotes from Barbara Wipf, the victim’s mother, to HuffPost stating her desire for the state to allow Wood to live.
Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board
Wood’s 17-year-old niece, Brooklyn Wood, described Wood as the “glue” in their family and her “best friend,” who helped her navigate bullying, self-harm and severe depression. “All I can ask is for you to put yourself in my shoes, where you’re about to lose your best friend and the only person that keeps you up and going in the morning. I always look forward to that one, single 20-minute phone call,” she said. “All I ask is you, as the clemency board, please spare my uncle.”
Wood was the final person to speak at the hearing. He described the crime as “the biggest regret of my life” and took responsibility for his role in the robbery that led to Wipf’s death.
“It never should have happened,” Wood said. “I had the power to say no that night and to say, ‘We’re not going to do this.’ I could have prevented Ronnie’s death. I could have prevented Arnold from being in that situation and the trauma that he suffered. All the damage coming from that night, which destroyed their family as well as mine, was preventable. And I’m the one who could have prevented it. Having the courage to stand up and man up and say that night — and say no, could have prevented all of this from happening. And for not doing that. I’m truly sorry.”
“I’m not a monster, I’m not a killer,” Wood continued. “I never was and I never have been. The person I am deep inside is a son, a brother, a father, a uncle, a friend and a grandfather — something that I never thought I would live to experience.”
“I ask you, board members,” Wood said, “to see something in my life worth value.”
In a surprise outcome, the board voted 3-2 in favor of clemency.
The next day, the attorney general’s office obtained a warrant to search the home of Micky Winn Scannell, Wood’s sister-in-law and the mother of Brooklyn. According to the warrant, which HuffPost has reviewed in part, officers were looking for evidence that Winn Scannell had smuggled drugs into a prison.
Winn Scannell gave HuffPost an account of the incident.
Around 6 a.m. on Monday, three days before Wood’s scheduled execution, agents from the attorney general’s office, as well as local law enforcement officers, showed up at Winn Scannell’s home. Law enforcement officials handcuffed Winn Scannell and her husband outside their home and pointed guns at their heads, the couple told HuffPost. They also detained Brooklyn inside a police car and tried to question her. Agents with the attorney general’s office spent five hours searching the home and ultimately seized Winn Scannell’s phone, her husband’s phone, Brooklyn’s phone, an iPad, and several debit cards, leaving the family with no way to purchase food and other necessities.
Asked why the attorney general’s office was aggressively pursuing an investigation into a man days away from a scheduled execution, press secretary Leslie Berger declined to comment. She also declined to provide HuffPost with a copy of the full search warrant.
Wood has been held in solitary confinement since June as punishment for the contraband cellphones. As part of his punishment, he lost access to contact visits and was limited to a single one-hour no-contact visit a week, separated from his visitors by bars and plexiglass.
On Wednesday, the day before his scheduled execution, he was allowed a final contact visit with his family. Linda Wood said it was the first time she’d been able to hug her son since May.
“I didn’t want to stop hugging him,” she told HuffPost, “because I didn’t know if it would be the last time.”