A red state prepares to execute a man who has never been proven to have killed anyone

MCALESTER, Okla. — Oklahoma’s top prosecutor wanted to make sure the state executed a man who was never proven to have killed anyone. And so, on a Tuesday afternoon in July, he sent a secret message to a judge asking for help. “I have an active investigative matter that I wish to address with you,” Gentner Drummond, the state attorney general, began his email.

The recipient was Gary Lumpkin, the chief judge of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. The subject line misspelled the name of the man on death row, Tremane Wood.

It was a complicated case for Drummond, who had earned a reputation as a fair arbiter of capital punishment. The death penalty is supposedly reserved for the “worst of the worst” type of criminals, but Tremane was never a particularly compelling example. In 2002, Tremane, his older brother and two women were charged with first-degree murder for killing Ronnie Wipf during a botched robbery. Wipf died from a single stab wound, but under the state’s so-called felony murder statute, prosecutors did not have to prove who killed him to obtain murder convictions, only that each of them participated in the robbery that led to the death.

Tremane denied stabbing Wipf. He was represented at trial by a lawyer struggling with drug addiction who did almost no work on the case, and Tremane was sentenced to death. His older brother, who testified that he had killed Wipf, had strong legal representation and received a life sentence. The result seemed perverse at first glance: the person who admitted to the murder received a more lenient sentence than his little brother, who swore he had never killed anyone.

Even some of the people who helped convict Tremane came to feel that something had gone wrong. The jury foreman, the only black member of the jury, has saying she felt pressured to vote in favor of death and would have resisted for life if she had more information about the case. The state’s star witness, who is also the mother of Tremane’s oldest son, told News themezone that she doesn’t want Tremane to die. He also did it surviving victim of the robbery, as well as the mother of the murdered man.

Apparently, the person most determined to kill Tremane is the state attorney general.

Nick Oxford for News themezone

Drummond had previously asked The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) set Tremane’s execution for September 11, which would have required the state to hold a clemency hearing in advance. At that hearing, Tremane and his attorneys would have the opportunity to present a case asking for clemency and ask the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend that the governor spare his life. Perhaps the manifest injustice of the sentences would capture national sympathies and pressure the state to retract the execution.

So Drummond, who is running to become governor of the state, a tough-on-crime attorney general – came up with a plan that could sabotage Tremane’s chances of clemency. To achieve this, he needed the help of Lumpkin, the judge overseeing the case. He explained in the email, which was recently revealed in a court filing, what he needed and then signed: “Thank you in advance for your indulgence in this request.”

The attorney general’s attempt to enlist the help of the judge overseeing Tremane’s case to clear the way for his execution is a blow to a case that was already emblematic of the systemic injustice in the way the criminal justice system determines who deserves to be killed by the state. Like News themezone narrated in detail in a previous articleTremane’s case is marked by accusations 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, Tremane has been denied redress at every turn.

In the final days leading up to Tremane’s scheduled execution, including this week, additional details have emerged exposing how Oklahoma prosecutors and judges have coordinated in ways that have undermined Tremane’s ultimate chances for a meaningful review of his case.

Drummond’s press secretary, Leslie Berger, declined to answer a list of questions about his handling of the Tremane case, citing an “investigation” into Tremane, although she declined to specify who is leading the investigation. When asked if Tremane fit the description of the “worst of the worst” criminals for whom the death penalty is supposedly reserved, Berger wrote, “he was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to death.” He stated that he had a fair trial.

Lumpkin did not respond to requests for comment.

As things stand, Tremane faces a November 13 execution date. On Thursday, he asked the Supreme Court to stay his execution and review his allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. He has been locked in solitary confinement since June, where he is not allowed contact visitors. Unless the prison changes course, he may never hug his loved ones again.

Tremane’s earliest memories are of his father, a police officer, beating his mother. When Tremane and his two older brothers tried to protect their mother, their father beat them too.

“He beat me to the point where you couldn’t even tell what it was like, he broke my teeth, he broke my nose, he broke my bones and then he wouldn’t even let me get medical help,” said Tremane’s mother, Linda Wood. he previously told News themezone. Tremane’s father, who died in 2012, admitted in court to spanking his children “like a normal father would,” pushing Linda once and handcuffing her to a car another time. But he denied being abusive.

Tremane idolized his older brother Zjaiton “Jake” Wood, his mother told a social worker in 1994. “He would die for Jake,” she said.

Tremane Wood’s family

“I’ve never seen anyone be so loyal to one person,” his older brother, Andre Wood, said in an interview last year. “Tremane would follow Jake to the ends of the Earth. Tremane simply loved his brother. And Jake loved Tremane. And there was nothing that could break that. Nothing.”

Following Jake’s example, Tremane joined a gang and fell into the juvenile detention system when he was a teenager. In late 2001, Jake returned home after spending seven years in prison. By then, Tremane, 22, had two children and a job at a pizzeria in Oklahoma City. He was focused on staying out of trouble.

On New Year’s Eve, Tremane was at a house party with his cousins ​​when Jake showed up and told Tremane to come with him. Eager to spend time with his brother after years apart, Tremane agreed. They went to a brewery with Jake’s girlfriend, Lanita Bateman, and Tremane’s ex-girlfriend, Brandy Warden.

There, the women were approached by two strangers named Ronnie Wipf and Arnold Kleinsasser, who were passing through Oklahoma on their way back to work on a harvesting crew. Ronnie suggested that the four of them go back to a motel room. Brandy and Lanita didn’t want to go, they would later say, but they felt pressure from Jake and Tremane to get money from the unsuspecting men.

In the motel room, the group negotiated a price of $210 in exchange for sex. Lanita discreetly gave Jake the motel room number, hoping that she and Brandy could escape without having sex and be picked up by the brothers. But before we got that far, two masked men in long trench coats and leather gloves knocked on the door. When Ronnie opened the door, the men burst into the room and the girls ran out.

A fight ensued. Arnold managed to escape, but Ronnie was fatally stabbed. Within days, Tremane, Jake, Brandy, and Lanita were arrested and charged with first-degree felony murder, robbery with a firearm, and conspiracy to commit robbery with a dangerous weapon. Prosecutors sought long prison sentences for the women and death sentences for both brothers.

The young women were faced with an impossible choice: help send people they deeply loved to death row or risk spending the rest of their lives in prison. Lanita, 19, who had only been dating Jake for two months, refused to cooperate with the state and was sentenced to life in prison, plus 101 years. Brandy, 20, who had known Tremane since they were children, agreed to testify for the state in exchange for a reduced sentence. She had three young children, including a son by Tremane, to return home with.

Conflict of interest restrictions prevented the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System from representing both Wood brothers, so the court assigned Tremane’s case to private attorney Johnny Albert. Albert, once a respected criminal defense attorney, was battling drug addiction when he took on Tremane’s case and would later temporarily lose his law license due to allegations of client negligence. He billed only two hours of work on the case outside of court and never visited his client in jail. He did not present evidence that Tremane was not the murderer and that his abusive childhood justified leniency in sentencing.

Watching the trial unfold was torture, Andre said. “I’m sitting there looking at my mom and thinking, ‘Is this the fucking lawyer?’” Andre previously told News themezone. “I wanted to stand up and say, ‘Can I represent my brother? Because this moron has no idea what he’s doing.’ You could tell the guy was out of his mind. I mean, I’ve seen people screwed up. This lawyer was screwed.”

Nick Oxford for News themezone

As Albert failed to mount a meaningful defense for Tremane, Jake made the highly unusual decision to testify at his brother’s trial before his own. He testified that he stabbed Ronnie and that Tremane was not with him the night of the robbery. He didn’t want his brother to die for something he didn’t do, he said.

Parts of Jake’s testimony lacked credibility. Brandy had already fingered Tremane in the motel robbery. But there is evidence that Jake was telling the truth that he, not Tremane, killed Ronnie. Before Lanita was sentenced, a probation officer prepared a report documenting her memory of the crime. In the report, he describes hearing Jake say he “thought he killed a guy” after getting home from the motel. This report was available at the time of Tremane’s trial, but Albert never presented it to the jury. If Albert had asked, Lanita would have been willing to testify in support of Tremane, she wrote in a 2011 deposition.

Lanita has no regrets about not testifying before the state, even though she may spend the rest of her life in prison. “I can be free no matter where my body is. They can’t lock up my spirit,” he said in a recent interview. “It wouldn’t help to kill someone.” Tremane’s impending execution has made her feel “powerless,” she said. “I’m devastated. I’m dying inside.”

“Try saving someone and you can’t do anything but sit and wait and hope that people make the right decisions is painful,” Lanita said.

Although the state did not have to prove that Tremane killed Ronnie for the jury to find him guilty, prosecutors portrayed him as an unrepentant killer and argued that he deserved the maximum punishment.

“This person plunged a large knife into the chest of a 19-year-old man. He stuck it there five inches. And he never said to any person, ‘I’m sorry,'” Oklahoma County Deputy Prosecutor Fern Smith said.

“What kind of person is that? Someone different than you and me. And that fact… is why he deserves the death penalty,” Smith said. “How can you intentionally and knowingly kill another human being and not regret it?”

Tremane was found guilty and sentenced to death.

At Jake’s trial the following year, prosecutors changed their theory of the crime and portrayed Jake as the killer. They presented their testimony from Tremane’s trial and letters supposedly written by Jake to Brandy and Smith, the prosecutor, boasting about the murder and threatening more violence.

“You have evidence from the defendant’s mouth that … he did in fact murder Ronnie Wipf,” Smith said. “You also have some letters in which he himself says that he murdered Ronnie Wipf. Not only did he murder Ronnie Wipf, but he liked it. He enjoyed it.”

Initially, Jake wanted to join his brother on death row. But his attorneys worked hard to earn his trust and convince him to engage in a vigorous defense. Jurors found Jake guilty of felony murder, but this time they voted to let him live. Jake was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Tremane Wood’s family

Two years after Tremane’s trial, Albert was arrested after repeatedly failing to appear in court for another case. The lawyer admitted he was struggling with substance abuse and was released on bail to begin drug and alcohol treatment. The Oklahoma State Bar charged him with 11 counts of professional misconduct based on allegations of negligence by his former clients. Albert admitted to the allegations and his law license was suspended for 14 months.

Two of Albert’s former clients in separate cases have had their death sentences overturned for lack of legal assistance. Before he died in 2018, Albert admitted in two separate affidavits to doing a poor job on the Tremane case. He also wrote Tremane a note of apology, saying: “I’m sorry for everything that happened in the past. You caught me at a bad time and it’s not your fault.” (He also misspelled Tremane’s name.) But appeals courts had repeatedly rejected Tremane’s requests for a new trial, largely on procedural technicalities.

News themezone

The trial judge in Tremane’s case rejected his proposal for a new trial, ruling that Albert’s actions were part of the trial strategy. Even after Albert said that was not the case, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals denied Tremane’s request for post-conviction relief, finding that Albert’s “client neglect, drug and alcohol abuse, and emotional instability” appeared to have begun after Tremane’s trial ended.

Years later, several people who were part of a gang called the Playboy Gangsta Crips provided Tremane’s legal team with affidavits detailing how Albert represented gang members in exchange for drugs. Former clients described seeing Albert drink and use drugs regularly before and during the period he represented Tremane.

But that still wasn’t enough for the court. In presenting this evidence, the OCCA again denied Tremane’s petition, stating that it was “identical” to his prior claim of ineffective assistance of counsel and that he should have presented this evidence when he first sought relief.

“I’m not asking to come home,” Tremane said in an interview last year. “I just want a fair trial with a competent lawyer.”

In 2019, shortly after Tremane became eligible to be executed, Jake committed suicide in his cell. Tremane could never understand how his brother, the strongest person he knew, could commit suicide. Some members of his family still doubt the cause of his death. But spending months in solitary confinement, Tremane understands how his brother lost the will to live, he said when I visited him in August. “I see what isolation does to your mind.”

The day before the visit, Tremane’s mother told me that he has a strong mentality, but that he was tired. He continued to fight to live, he told her, because he worried about what would happen to her if he died.

Nick Oxford for News themezone

“I’ve tried to play that scenario in my head a million times and I can’t,” Linda said in an interview. “When I think about his death, I can’t breathe. I still cry for my son Jake every day because losing your son is not something you ever get over. I wouldn’t wish it on the person I hate the most in the world. But losing two children, I don’t know. I don’t know how people continue,” she said through tears.

“I can’t tell him, ‘Son, if you die, don’t worry, I’ll be fine.’ Because I won’t. I’ll never be fine,” he said.

Linda never met Ronnie’s mother, Barbara Wipf, but suspects that Barbara never recovered from the loss of her son. “My heart aches for her. And I know there is nothing I can say or do that will bring her peace.”

After Ronnie’s death, Barbara fell into a deep depression, she said. It never went away, but with the help of medication, he found a way to cope. “Sometimes all you can do is get it out of your system,” Barbara said in an interview, the lingering pain still audible in her soft voice. “You cry and cry and cry. And then you feel a little better.”

Years after Ronnie’s death, Barbara’s daughter, her only other child, died unexpectedly. “I guess God doesn’t give you too much to bear. He helps you carry everything. We have to believe there is a God,” he said.

When Barbara sees Ronnie’s friends get married and have children, she thinks about what a good father he would have been. He asked me questions about Tremane and his family. If it bothered him that Tremane had children and grandchildren and his son did not, he did not say so. If anything, it sounded sad that Tremane couldn’t be with them. She told me I could tell Linda that she also lost two children.

Tremane wrote Barbara and her husband a letter last year apologizing for his role in their son’s death. “He wrote to me how sorry he is, which I believe, because my religion tells me that he wrote the truth,” Barbara said, referring to her Hutterite faith. “I think I should feel sorry.”

But she and her husband don’t believe in the death penalty and she doesn’t want Tremane to die. “They should let him live,” he said. “I don’t think they should execute him.”

“This will not bring [Ronnie] “Back,” Barbara continued. “It’s sad and it will continue to be sad.”

“This is not going to bring him back… It’s sad and it will continue to be sad.”

– Barbara Wipf on her son, Ronnie Wipf

Earlier this year, Tremane thought he might finally get a chance to participate in a new trial.

He had filed his fifth request for post-conviction relief, this time arguing that prosecutors lied about incentives offered to Brandy in exchange for her trial testimony.

The OCCA took the rare step of ordering the trial court to hold an evidentiary hearing to investigate the allegations. When Tremane heard the news, he had a panic attack.

“I’m used to getting bad news and I know how to deal with it,” he said in the August interview. “I didn’t know what to do with the good news. It’s scary to get your hopes up.”

Throughout the trial, prosecutors repeatedly told jurors that Brandy, their star witness, would serve 45 years in prison. The idea that she would be imprisoned when she was 60 probably increased her credibility with the jury because it suggested that she was not gaining much by cooperating with the state. “We always felt like we could argue that to the jury. Well, she’s getting a life sentence too, you know?” former Oklahoma County Assistant District Attorney George Burnett said in a procedural interview with the Attorney General’s Office before the evidentiary hearing.

In fact, Brandy’s sentence was later modified to 35 years, in exchange for her testifying against her co-defendants, and with the credit of “good time,” she was released after 12 years. That release date was only possible, Tremane’s lawyers said, because of crucial terms of his agreement that were not disclosed to jurors.

The hearing, which took place over several days in April, yielded explosive revelations.

At first, Burnett testified that the prosecution’s plea deal with Brandy represented the full extent of their agreement. Federal public defender Amanda Bass Castro Alves, one of Tremane’s current attorneys, confronted Burnett with evidence that his plea agreement with another prosecution witness did not reflect the fact that prosecutors had dismissed and downgraded the witness’s pending felonies after Tremane was sentenced to death.

Burnett later testified that the full scope of the state’s agreement with Brandy was actually documented in a “memorandum,” not the plea agreement. After learning that neither Tremane’s attorneys nor the state had seen the memo, the judge obtained a copy of Brandy’s case file from the Oklahoma County Public Defender’s office. It clearly showed, contrary to prosecutors’ claims at Tremane’s trial, that Brandy would receive a 35-year sentence in exchange for testifying against her co-defendants.

Oklahoma County District Court

When asked why Burnett repeatedly told the jury that Brandy would spend 45 years in prison, he testified that he “probably made a mistake.”

“Never underestimate my… my ability to say something stupid in front of a jury,” Burnett said.

At the time of Tremane’s trial, Brandy was already serving a deferred felony sentence for an unrelated crime that could be dismissed if she successfully completed probation. After she was charged with felony murder, a violation of probation, probation officials filed a report to move forward with her deferred sentence. But that county’s district attorney chose to “wait,” he wrote in a note about the report.

If the deferred felony sentence had moved forward, she would not have even been eligible for a sentence modification from 45 to 35 years, Bass Castro Alves wrote in a court filing.

This deal not only secretly reduced her sentence, but also allowed prosecutors to emphasize to jurors Brandy’s lack of a criminal record. “The suppression by prosecutors of their agreement total do with warden undermined [Tremane’s] defense and misled the jury by depriving them of information critical to the jurors’ evaluation of Warden’s truthfulness, credibility, and motivations for testifying about the story he told the jury,” Bass Castro Alves wrote.

“Never underestimate my… my ability to say something stupid in front of a jury.”

– George Burnett, former Oklahoma County Deputy District Attorney

Brandy was not involved in discussions about the details of his plea deal, he said in an interview. She believed she was agreeing to a 45-year deal, with an opportunity for review one year after her sentencing. His lawyer told him that this was the only way to return home to his children. “It was the first time I felt like I was betraying him. I loved my children with everything and I had to choose,” she said.

Brandy met Tremane when she was about 10 years old and they dated on and off when they were teenagers. She loved Tremane, but came to fear Jake, who used intimidation and violence to get his way. When Brandy was about 16, Jake put a gun in her mouth and threatened to kill her after she disobeyed his order to stay in the house, she said in an interview. At the time of the trial, she was angry at Tremane for not standing up to her brother, but has since come to understand how much control Jake had over him.

The months after the crime were a nightmarish haze. The cops kicked down the door to her sister’s house while Brandy was helping her little boy clean up after going to the bathroom. She begged the officers to let each of her children hug her while she sat handcuffed on the couch. Once he was in jail, his father was arrested for an unrelated crime, leaving his sister alone to care for his children. Jail staff placed her on suicide watch and prescribed her a high dose of trazodone.

“I felt like a zombie,” he said.

Prosecutors threatened to send her to prison for the rest of her life unless she cooperated with the state. Jake was sending him threats. She didn’t want to help send Tremane to death row, but she also felt like he didn’t care what he had put her and her children through.

“Now I understand that he did care. I understand that he regrets it and I think he wishes he had told his brother no.”

“It was the first time I felt like I was betraying him. I loved my children with everything and I had to choose.”

– Brandy Warden, mother of Tremane’s oldest son

Any anger Tremane may have felt toward Brandy has dissipated, he previously told News themezone. “I always feel some kind of love for her. We’ve been through a lot,” he said. “I can’t be mad at her for being in a position she should never have been in. That’s on me.”

The discovery of the secret plea memorandum was vindicating for Tremane. Finally, he believed, there was clear evidence that the state had not followed the rules. The courts had not cared that Tremane’s lawyer was so severely affected by addiction that he barely presented a defense for his client, but they would surely see this as warranting a new trial.

“I was very impressed with Amanda,” he said of his attorney. “I thought we won. I thought we were going to have a new trial.”

Nick Oxford for News themezone

There were reasons to be hopeful. Drummond, the attorney general, pushed to slow the pace of executions shortly after taking office in 2023. Then, in an unprecedented move, he asked the Supreme Court to stop the execution of Richard Glossip and review the prisoner’s claim of innocence. The Supreme Court overturned Glossip’s death sentence in February, a surprising result for a man who had survived nine executions. The high-profile debacle of the Glossip case led several Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma, a deeply Republican state, to support an execution moratorium.

For Tremane, it seemed like the people in charge were finally realizing some of the flaws in the system. At the very least, it seemed that Drummond was willing to admit when the state had made a mistake. (Drummond has since changed course on the Glossip case: After accepting a plan for the release of Glossip If his conviction were annulled, Drummond is retrying Glossip for first degree murder).

After the evidentiary hearing, District Judge Susan Stallings had 30 days to report her findings. But the judge did not write her own conclusions. Instead, he signed and presented the state’s version of events almost word for word, which claimed that Tremane had failed to prove the existence of a secret agreement between the state and Brandy, and that even if such an agreement existed, it would not have changed the outcome of his trial.

Stallings, the judge, had previously credited Fern Smith, the lead prosecutor in Tremane’s trial, for guiding his career when he worked in the district attorney’s office right after finishing law school. Despite all the talk of reforms, things remained practically the same.

Stallings did not respond to a request for comment.

The following month, Drummond asked the OCCA to schedule Tremane’s execution for September 11, 2025.

In recent weeks, court proceedings in the Glossip case have exposed additional details about Stallings’ relationship with Smith. On Friday, Stallings became the third judge to recuse herself from Glossip’s retrial after Smith, who also prosecuted Glossip’s trial, testified that she and Stallings had traveled together to Las Vegas, Spain and England, according to a lawyer in the courtroom. Stallings testified in September that he had traveled to Spain with Smith in the 1990s, but did not mention the other two trips.

The Glossip team also uncovered a recent email exchange between Stallings and Smith that showed the two celebrating the state’s argument in the Tremane case, which Stallings was overseeing.

“I thought you might like to see the order (unfiled version),” Stallings wrote on May 7, around the time he presented his findings, which were almost identically consistent with the state’s proposed findings.

“Thank you so much!! Incredible!! I don’t know when I have seen a more thorough analysis and well-reasoned opinion,” Smith wrote of the findings, which cleared her of wrongdoing.

“Which I can’t take credit for. They are the conclusions proposed by the attorney general’s office,” admitted the judge, who was supposed to be an impartial arbiter between Tremane and the state. “They did an exceptional job.”

When Tremane arrived at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 2004, death row prisoners were held in the H unit, a constellation of windowless concrete cells. They spent 22 to 24 hours a day in their cells and were allowed only “non-contact visits,” separated from their loved ones by a thick layer of plexiglass. Being incarcerated in Unit H was like being “buried alive,” one prisoner told the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma.

Under threat of litigation from the ACLU-OK, the corrections department agreed to move death row prisoners to Unit A in 2019, making small quality-of-life improvements. Most importantly for Tremane, they were allowed weekly contact visits. For the first time since his arrest, Tremane was able to hug his mother. When his first granddaughter was born, he was able to cradle her in his arms, a moment he never thought he would live to experience.

But by summer, even those brief, joyful moments would be taken from Tremane.

Around the time Drummond requested a September 11 execution date, prison officials found contraband phones in Tremane’s cell.

Contraband cell phones are a serious crime, but they are also ubiquitous in nearly every prison in the United States, often because guards sneak them in and sell them to people desperate for a link to the outside world. Oklahoma Department of Corrections saying last month that it had confiscated more than 4,000 contraband phones by 2025, about one for every seven people in its custody. Because contraband phones are so common, guards often look the other way or mete out light punishments when they see one.

Contraband phones are a problem that is being “aggressively addressed at our facilities through agency investment in new contraband detection practices and technology, and nationally by the federal government through legal authorization for signal jamming/jamming,” Kay Thompson, chief public relations officer for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, said in an email. Punishment includes mandatory revocation of early release credits and mandatory level demotion, which affects the prisoner’s salary and access to privileges such as telephones, televisions and recreation. There is also the optional penalty of disciplinary segregation.

But for Tremane, getting caught with cell phones proved devastating.

As punishment, he was moved back to the H unit, where he is allowed a single one-hour non-contact visit per week and has limited access to a phone. These restrictions are in place longer than you are expected to live, meaning you may never again have the opportunity to hug your mother, your brother, your girlfriend, your children, your nieces and nephews, or your grandchildren.

When social worker Jorja Leap visited Tremane on July 2 in preparation for his clemency hearing, she was alarmed by his apparent deterioration since her last visit in November. During his previous visit, Tremane acknowledged that he could face imminent execution, “but he was hopeful and positive about how long he might be alive,” Leap wrote in a report. But in July “he was desperate and cried during the three hours we spent together.” He told her that he had acquired enough pills to overdose and that he had tried to make a noose to hang himself.

While Tremane contemplated ways to end his own life, Drummond worked trying to ensure that the state had the opportunity to kill him. With Tremane’s clemency hearing approaching, the smuggled cell phones presented the perfect opportunity to argue that he was not a rehabilitated family man, but rather an unrepentant rule-breaker, undeserving of clemency.

On July 15, Drummond sent an email to Lumpkin, the judge overseeing Tremane’s case, to secretly notify him about the cell phone smuggling. He suggested, without evidence, that Tremane had used the phones to sell drugs, order a “hit” on another prisoner and communicate with his public defender and a county judge’s clerk. (In a subsequent email, Drummond clarified that the public defender Tremane had contacted was not part of his current legal team. The attorney, who represented Tremane years ago, has since resigned from the public defender’s office.)

Drummond had taken the unusual step of forward the phone incident to state law enforcement officials and wanted the judge to quietly postpone Tremane’s execution to give the state more time to build its case before his clemency hearing.

At first, Lumpkin seemed eager to please. He and the other OCCA judges planned to meet next week to discuss execution dates, the judge told the attorney general. “Is that time okay or is this something that will need attention before then? Please let me know,” Lumpkin emailed Drummond.

Drummond responded that the timing suited him and thanked the judge.

The American Bar Association advises both judges and lawyers against “ex parte communications,” or communication between a decision maker and an interested party without the knowledge of the other parties. This is intended to ensure fairness in the judicial process and prevent one party from obtaining preferential treatment from the other. judge.

The night after Drummond’s request, Lumpkin sent a follow-up, noticeably more formal email. “I need to clarify that the Court cannot take any action or make any decision based on ex parte communications offered,” Lumpkin wrote. “The only matters that the Court can consider are those matters properly presented to the Court.”

But the attorney general did not want to formally request the delay. “Unfortunately, any filing my office makes, even under seal, on this matter will likely alert Mr. Wood to the nature of the investigation,” Drummond wrote. In other words, he did not want Tremane to have the opportunity to prepare a defense related to the cell phone allegations. “We would rather have a September 11 execution date than compromise the investigation by notifying Mr. Wood of the investigation,” Drummond wrote.

Oklahoma Code of Judicial Conduct requires a judge who inadvertently receives an ex parte communication to “promptly” notify the other parties to the case and give them an opportunity to respond. Lumpkin waited two weeks to notify Tremane and his lawyers about the communications and an additional nine days to provide them with the actual emails, which they then managed to open.

When Tremane’s lawyers read the emails between Drummond and Lumpkin, they realized why Tremane was being punished so harshly over the cell phones, Bass Castro Alves said in an interview.

“It was shocking to read that Attorney General Drummond prejudged the court against Tremane while that same court was deciding whether Tremane deserved a new trial, and that Attorney General Drummond also enlisted the court in his effort to portray Tremane as a public security threat to undermine his case for clemency without telling us.”

The state has not charged Tremane with any crime in connection with the contraband phones, which were first discovered in May. Bass Castro Alves asked Drummond in August and September to provide his team with all evidence supporting his allegations that Tremane committed criminal acts while on death row, as well as access to the phones and information stored on them for independent forensic analysis. Without this evidence, “we have been hamstrung in our ability to independently investigate these allegations or contest them,” he wrote in his request to Drummond.

Nick Oxford for News themezone

The attorney general refused to hand over the evidence, stating that because his office had not charged Tremane with any crime, he had no right to be discovered.

Tremane’s attorneys filed motions to recuse Lumpkin from Tremane’s case and sanction Drummond. The OCCA denied both requests. Days later, Lumpkin wrote the OCCA decision confirming Stallings’ findings.

Tremane and his attorneys didn’t see how Drummond was willing to use the phones to argue that Tremane deserved to die until Oct. 22, the deadline for each side to submit written materials related to the Nov. 5 clemency hearing.

In a series of bulleted lists, Drummond included more than 100 points of evidence recovered from the phones that allegedly showed Tremane engaging in criminal activity or misconduct while on death row. Most of the accusations involved drug sales or use. The most serious allegation is that Tremane ordered a friend imprisoned in another prison to arrange for another prisoner to be beaten. In screenshots of text messages included in the state’s pardon package, Tremane described the target as someone who killed his cousin.

“Wood’s actions on death row over the past several years, including distributing drugs and brutally beating another inmate, demonstrate that death is the only way to ensure the safety of Oklahomans,” Drummond wrote in a news release, announcing his opposition to Tremane’s clemency request.

Tremane admitted to having contraband phones and sometimes “getting lost behind walls,” he said. “During the 23 years I’ve been locked up, I’ve done things I’m not proud of and made bad decisions I regret,” he continued. “But I’m not a murderer.”

He also said the phones gave him a way to communicate with loved ones as much as possible during the limited time he had left. “If you had months to live,” he said, “wouldn’t you take a chance and break the rules so you could text your mom ‘Good morning’ every day?”

It is a paradox of the clemency process that exceptional rehabilitation is a requirement for obtaining clemency. However, prisoners sentenced to death are often deprived of rehabilitation programs and held in torture conditions. What is the point of rehabilitating a person whose punishment is death?

Since 2019, some people on death row have “been provided the opportunity to work in the units or in food service in a limited capacity,” Thompson wrote, noting that such decisions are made “based on the behavior” of prisoners. “Referrals to the program for all inmates are based on an objective assessment tool, availability and security level. All inmates have access to religious services.”

Tremane spent most of his imprisonment in solitary confinement, which the United Nations recognizes as a form of torture. His prison records show that he repeatedly requested work and programming, but was denied due to his death sentence. “There are no programs available on death row,” shows a record from 2006. In 2008: “No programs were evaluated because the inmates were serving the death penalty.” 2010: “The offender’s program needs have not been assessed due to his sentence.”

Last year, Tremane organized a petition for death row inmates asking for leadership for an advisory group where they could have a “safe and confidential space where [sic] inmates can openly express and process their pain and receive guidance from trained professionals.” Their petition was ignored. Of the 15 men who signed the petition, three have been executed.

Tremane Wood’s clemency application

Thompson said the DOC is not aware of a request, but confirmed that Tremane sent a letter to staff requesting a grief counseling group. In response, staff purchased a workbook titled “Hardcore Grief Recovery” and offered it to each person sentenced to death, Thompson wrote.

“Attorney General Drummond is pushing for Tremane’s execution, not because Tremane killed anyone (he hasn’t, and the real killer has confessed), not because the death penalty reflects the sentence the jury really wanted for Tremane (it doesn’t, and the jury foreman has said as much before the Oklahoma legislature), not because he is the most guilty (it doesn’t, the real killer confessed and received a life sentence),” Bass Castro Alves wrote in an email.

“Rather, Attorney General Drummond is pushing for Tremane to be executed because Tremane has at times lost his way in prison, like many of the thousands of incarcerated people discarded by the system, and has made decisions he has come to regret. I am hopeful that the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board will see the Attorney General’s tactics for what they are: a massive distraction from the powerful evidence that Tremane’s death sentence is unjustifiable and that “His life is worth saving.”

When I visited Tremane last year, we spent about five hours sitting on opposite sides of a long table in the prison’s visiting room. He took responsibility for participating in the robbery that led to Ronnie’s death and expressed remorse for the pain he caused the victims, Brandy, Lanita, and their family. He described how he had grown since the time of the crime and spoke proudly of the support he provides to his family. He was fiercely protective of his mother, an unwavering source of love.

By August, he had visibly declined, his face was drawn and his eyes were quickly filling with tears. Since he was only allowed one visit a week, he had to give up one of his few remaining visits with his loved ones in order to talk to me. Separated by bars and plexiglass, we had to get so close to hear each other through the holes in the wall that I could feel their breathing.

There was no clock visible in the contactless visiting area. Without warning, a guard approached the back door of the small cell in which Tremane was kept. The time was up. As we hurriedly said our goodbyes, I stared at the relatively healthy 45-year-old man in front of me who, if all goes according to the government’s plan, will soon be dead. I watched as he crouched down, hands behind his back, to put his wrists through the hole for the guard to handcuff them.

In my effort to witness every second I could, I was left with a final memory of Tremane that is no different than the image he told me he wanted to avoid: his body in a position of surrender to the people who would kill him.

Tremane has told his friends and family that he doesn’t want them in the room if he is executed. He doesn’t want them to see him strapped to a stretcher with a needle in his arm every time they close their eyes. He doesn’t want that image to be the last memory they have of him.

Nick Oxford for News themezone

Most of the people closest to him say they couldn’t watch. “I can’t consciously sit by and watch someone kill my brother and I can’t do anything about it,” Andre said. “I would feel like I’m failing my little brother because I’m his older brother. How am I not protecting him?”

“And knowing that no matter how much I scream and bang on the window and say, ‘This isn’t right,’ there’s nothing that can stop it. I can’t. I can’t.”

Brenden Wood, Brandy’s son with Tremane, co He built a relationship with his mother through letters, phone calls, and visits during his incarceration. But the relatives who raised him prevented him from meeting Tremane. When Brandy returned home, she took Brenden to visit Tremane so the boy could form his own opinion of his father.

“I was crying, trying to keep it together. It tore me up inside knowing that half of the things I’d heard about my dad this whole time were wrong,” Brenden he previously told News themezone of his first visit to Tremane, which occurred when he was a teenager. “A bunch of lies. They made him out to be a monster. Acting like someone can’t make a mistake and be forgiven.”

Despite Tremane’s efforts to shield his family from the memory of his execution, Brenden insists that he will witness the murder. As an active member of the military, he had to apply for emergency leave to travel to Oklahoma.

“If I were on my deathbed, I wouldn’t want all I saw were white walls. I’d like to know my family is there,” Brenden said in an interview. “This is my way of showing that no matter what others say about you, it’s not going to change my opinion of you. I’m here for you.”

Brenden continued: “I haven’t had enough time to have a full relationship with him. This could possibly be the last thing I can do.”

Brandy plans to wait outside the prison in the parking lot to take her son home. “I know it’s real, but I keep telling myself, ‘This isn’t real,’ because I don’t want it to happen,” Brandy said in August, tears streaming down her face. “I know he will always have a place in my heart and I am so grateful that we are lucky enough to have such a special part of him: our son Brenden.”

“I can’t consciously sit there and watch someone kill my brother and I can’t do anything about it… I would feel like I’m failing my little brother because I’m his older brother. How am I not protecting him?”

– Andre Wood, older brother of Tremane Wood

As the Nov. 13 execution date approaches, Tremane’s girlfriend and family members alternate who will get visitation each week. On October 4, Linda made the two-hour trip with Tremane’s sister-in-law, Micky Winn-Scannell, her daughter Brooklyn Wood and Tremane’s other niece, Andreyanna Wood.

The prison requires visitors under 18 to bring a copy of their birth certificate, but 17-year-old Brooklyn was previously able to enter with her ID. This time, however, a guard refused to let her enter.

“Is there no way we can talk to someone?” —Brooklyn pleaded. “My uncle only has 40 days to live.”

The guards didn’t relent, so Brooklyn sat in the car with her mom in the parking lot until the visit was over. He had just gotten braces and couldn’t wait to show them to Tremane.

Winn-Scannell initially tried to keep her children away from Tremane, hoping to spare them the pain of approaching someone who would be executed. Despite their efforts, they got to know him through letters and phone calls. Winn-Scannell eventually stopped trying to discourage the relationship once she saw how much Brooklyn benefited from being able to trust her uncle.

Winn-Scannell worries how her daughter, who has previously struggled with self-harm, will cope without Tremane. During a recent phone call with Tremane, she recorded him saying, “I love you niece, mwah, mwah, mwah.”

If executed, Winn-Scannell plans to use audio to turn Brooklyn into a teddy bear with a customizable voice message. “If everything doesn’t change, at least she’ll have that,” Winn-Scannell said.

Tremane Wood’s clemency application

On Oct. 9, the day Tremane turned 46, he had a full-body physical exam. A doctor checked his vital signs and put a tourniquet on his arm and leg to check the status of his veins. They needed to make sure he was healthy enough to kill him.

After the physical examination, he was taken to the visiting room, where he sat chained in front of a dozen prison officials and employees. The warden read his death warrant and detailed how he would be killed. He took note of the paralyzing drug used: if he felt pain, he probably wouldn’t be able to express it.

They gave him his 35-day package, documentation that told him to choose his last meal, his list of witnesses (a maximum of five), and what he would like done with his body and property. The prison offered takeout menus from several restaurants in McAlester, including Big Macs BBQ, likely a reference to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary’s nickname. The menu includes dishes like “Behind Bars Rib,” “Prison Smoked Turkey,” and “Life Sentence Platter,” although the latter exceeds the prison’s $25 allowance. (Thompson said the DOC “does not provide menus of any specific restaurant as options for inmates who choose their last meals.

The director detailed what “death watch” would entail, the last seven days before the execution date. Tremane will be subject to constant surveillance. Every time you leave your cell, you will be strip-searched. If you brush your teeth, you should return the brush when you are done. The lights will never go out.

It was an unsettling experience for him, sitting in that room, surrounded by strangers watching him learn the details of how he will die.

“It makes you feel alone,” he said.