Oklahoma Spared Tremane Wood’s Life. His Case Highlights Everything Wrong with Criminal Trials in America.
Oklahoma prisoner Tremane Wood was set to be executed on November 13. Instead, last-minute clemency from Governor Kevin Stitt saved his life. Despite this welcome news, Tremane’s case remains a showcase of the injustices marring America’s criminal law system.
Tremane was sentenced to death as a result of the 2002 stabbing of 19-year-old Ronnie Wipf during a robbery gone wrong. Tremane’s brother, Zjaiton “Jake” Wood, confessed to stabbing Ronnie in the heart. Jake was sentenced to life without parole (he died by suicide six years ago).
Tremane was convicted of the exact same crime: felony murder. As HuffPost reported, under Oklahoma’s felony murder laws, “anyone involved in a felony that leads to a death can be held criminally responsible for that death, regardless of intent or involvement in the actual killing.” It made no difference that Jake admitted to landing the fatal blow—or that the courts spared his life.
This discrepancy is disturbing, as are the reasons for it. Jake was represented by public defenders who specialized in defending capital cases. Tremane’s attorney was battling drug addiction, did nearly no work to prepare his case, and ultimately had his law license suspended.
Prosecutors committed wrongs too. The government told the jury that one of its witnesses, an accomplice to the botched robbery, lacked an incentive to lie because she would serve 45 years in prison for her part in Ronnie’s killing. That was a lie. Evidence later uncovered by Tremane’s lawyers showed that the government promised that she would be sentenced to only 35 years; she actually served just 12 years before being released.
The problems with Tremane’s trial concerned the Court of Criminal Appeals, which ordered a rare evidentiary hearing into his case. Stunningly, that hearing only led to fresh concerns. Presiding over the hearing was District Judge Susan Stallings, who considered Fern Smith—the lead prosecutor from Tremane’s trial—a close mentor. The two had vacationed together in Las Vegas, England, and Spain.
Stallings signed an order denying Tremane relief—one drafted by the government. Smith beamed that she may have never “seen a more thorough analysis and well-reasoned opinion” than the one from Stallings, to which the judge replied she didn’t deserve the credit as her order was drafted by Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s office.
Drummond, running for governor as an anti-crime crusader, also showed zeal for taking Tremane’s life. He secretly contacted the Court of Criminal Appeals to ask it to hold off on scheduling Tremane’s execution so he could investigate whether Tremane committed new offenses while imprisoned.
In spite of all the pressures to the contrary, the Pardon and Parole Board voted 3–2 to recommend that Tremane’s sentence be commuted to life without the possibility of parole. The governor agreed to do so.
At every turn, Tremane’s case highlights systematic injustices in the pursuit of criminal justice.
He was charged with felony murder and thus held responsible for the taking of another human being’s life regardless of whether he actually killed that person. Tremane received death where his brother received life, apparently due to the his lawyer’s awful representation. And prosecutors hid key evidence concerning one of their star witnesses.
The post-conviction hearing into the case was presided over by a judge who was a protégé and dear friend of the prosecutor from the original trial. The attorney general tried to have a court do the government a solid by postponing Tremane’s execution. Against all these odds, Tremane will live.
But will the system that nearly took his life be held to account? Almost certainly not—and that’s an indictment of doctrines not just people. Qualified immunity keeps people from recovering for rights violations in almost any case that isn’t a virtual match for an earlier case. Prosecutorial immunity means government lawyers like Smith virtually never answer for abuses. Judicial immunity shields judges and law clerks who commit wrongdoing. Some lawmakers are raising questions about Oklahoma’s felony murder statute, but it remains in full effect—unlike in other states.
Governor Stitt’s grace kept Tremane alive. Thank God for it. But the rest of us should not sleep easy knowing that the system that sent him so far down the line toward an untimely death remains intact.