A death row inmate in Oklahoma was told moments before his scheduled execution that he will instead get to live out his years behind bars.
Tremane Wood, 46, was due to receive a lethal injection at Oklahoma State Penitentiary at 10am local time on Thursday for murdering a travelling teenage farmer during a motel robbery on New Year’s Day 2002.
He was sat in his cell waiting to be taken to the chamber but the call never came.
At 10.01am, the state governor, Kevin Stitt, announced his decision to grant clemency.
‘After a thorough review of the facts and prayerful consideration, I have chosen to accept the Pardon and Parole Board’s recommendation to commute Tremane Wood’s sentence to life without parole,’ Stitt said in a statement.
The governor said the move meant Wood’s punishment would now ‘reflect’ that of his brother, Zjaiton ‘Jake’ Wood, who also took part in the murder but was sentenced only to life without parole.
It followed a campaign to grant clemency for Tremane, who has always denied killing Ronnie Wipf, 19, who was from a Montana colony of pacifist Christians known as Hutterites.
Zjaiton, who died by suicide in 2019, confessed to the killing but insisted his brother didn’t take part in the crime. Witnesses contradicted his claims.
Tremane did not testify at his trial, but later admitted to taking part in the robbery – though he blamed his brother for Ronnie’s death.
At their trials, jurors heard the pair had two female accomplices pretend to be prostitutes and lure Ronnie and his friend, fellow Hutterite Arnold Kleinsasser, to a motel in Oklahoma City.
The brothers were waiting in the motel wearing ski masks and trench coatsand attempted to rob the teenagers, who were travelling in the state to earn money from harvest work.
A scuffle ensued in which a gun went off and Ronnie was fatally stabbed in the heart, while Arnold managed to flee.
Tremane’s current attorney said he arrived with the knife, while Zjaiton had the gun, and that ‘Jake, at some point in this struggle, assumed control of the knife’.
Oklahoma’s state attorneys disputed this version of events, telling a Supreme Court hearing on the case that it ‘defies common sense’.
The prosecution did not have to prove Wood stabbed Ronnie because the law means anyone taking part in a violent felony that result’s in someone’s death can be charged with felony murder.
The campaign to get Tremane off death row was supported by both the survivor, Arnold, and Ronnie’s mother.
‘The Lord will take care of punishment. That’s not for us to decide,’ Barbara Wipf told HuffPost earlier this month.
Arnold, who says he received an apology letter from Tremane last year, added: ‘Being a Christian, I would be totally against it.
‘I look at it from a perspective of how much I’ve been forgiven from God. And that’s the same forgiveness I’m called to extend.’
Oklahoma’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, said the state respected their beliefs but said Tremane is still a danger to the public, accusing him of orchestrating violent crimes behind bars.
At a clemency hearing for the 46-year-old, the state provided texts and images which it claimed showed Tremane was selling drugs and ordering hits on other prisoners.
Drummond argued: ‘Clemency is not a right; it is an act of mercy considered only for those who, at minimum, demonstrate genuine remorse and moral transformation. Tremane Wood has done neither.
‘If ever there was a case that demonstrate society’s interests can diverge from the preferences of victims, it is this one,’
Appearing via video-link, Tremane told the hearing: ‘I’m not a killer, I never was, and I never have been.’
The hearing saw the state’s Pardon and Parole Board vote 3-2 in favour of recommending clemency.
The buck was then passed to the US Supreme Court, which at around 9amannounced it was refusing to stay the execution, leaving the final decision up to Governor Stitt.
Stitt’s decision an hour later was a rare one: in the five times the board has recommended clemency since execution was reintroduced in 2021, he has agreed only once.
The move was welcomed by both Democrats and Republican state leaders, as well as Oklahoma’s archbishop and anti-death penalty campaigners.
It was criticised by the attorneys who prosecuted the Wood brothers and Drummond, who said his office will ‘continue working to ensure that Tremane Wood remains behind bars’.
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