Oklahoma Board Recommends This Man’s Life Be Spared
This Feb. 9, 2023, photo provided by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections shows Tremane Wood, who was sentenced to die for the stabbing death of a man during a robbery in 2001. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections via AP)
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 on Wednesday to recommend that Governor Kevin Stitt spare the life of a man scheduled for execution next week for a 2001 stabbing during a failed robbery. The governor must now decide whether to commute Tremane Wood’s death sentence to life in prison.
Wood, 46, is set to be executed for the killing of 19-year-old migrant farmworker Ronnie Wipf during an attempted robbery at a north Oklahoma City hotel on New Year’s Eve in 2001. Wood’s attorneys acknowledge his involvement in the robbery but argue that it was his brother, Zjaiton Wood, who stabbed Wipf. Zjaiton, who received a no-parole life sentence and died in prison in 2019, reportedly admitted to multiple people that he was responsible for the killing, according to Tremane Wood’s attorney, Amanda Bass Castro Alves.
Castro Alves also criticized Wood’s original trial, saying his attorney was heavily drinking at the time and did minimal work on the case. She further alleged that prosecutors failed to disclose deals made with witnesses in exchange for their testimony. “Tremane’s death sentence is the product of a fundamentally broken system,” she said.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, highlighted Wood’s prison record, noting continued involvement in gang activity, drug transactions, use of contraband cellphones, and orchestrating attacks on other inmates. “Even within the confines of maximum security prison, Tremane Wood has continued to manipulate, exploit, and harm others,” Attorney General Gentner Drummond said.
Wood appeared before the board via video link from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, taking responsibility for his actions during the robbery and his misconduct in prison, but denying that he killed Wipf. “I’m not a monster. I’m not a killer. I never was and I never have been,” he said. “Not a day goes by in my life that I do not think about Ronnie and how much his mom and dad are suffering because they don’t have their son anymore.”
During Stitt’s nearly seven years in office, he has granted clemency only once, to death row inmate Julius Jones in 2021, and rejected clemency recommendations in four other cases. A total of 16 men have been executed under his administration.
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