In a dramatic eleventh-hour reprieve, Oklahoma death row inmate Tremane Wood received clemency just one minute before his scheduled execution by lethal injection.
The 44-year-old prisoner had spent more than two decades in solitary confinement after being convicted for the 2002 murder of 19-year-old Ronnie Wipf. Wood's execution had been set for 10am on 13 November at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
The Lottery of Death
The macabre process of selecting witnesses for the execution involved a lottery system conducted by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. Five media representatives were chosen from a box containing names on pieces of paper, with the department's cheerful email signature ironically stating: "Oklahoma Corrections. We Change Lives!"
Among those selected was a journalist who had put their name forward while researching the controversial drugs used in lethal injections. The witness described feeling nauseated and developing a raging headache as the execution time approached, despite trying to steel themselves by remembering their grandfather, a crime reporter who had witnessed nine executions in the 1930s.
A Troubled Case
Wood's conviction stemmed from a 2002 plot where he, his brother Jake, and two female friends lured Wipf and another man they'd met at Oklahoma City's Bricktown Brewery to a motel room to rob them. The situation turned deadly when Wipf was stabbed with a knife that penetrated five inches into his body.
The case revealed significant disparities in legal representation. Jake Wood, who had competent lawyers and testified that he committed the murder rather than his younger brother, received life imprisonment. Tremane Wood, however, was represented by a lawyer who abused alcohol and cocaine during the trial and barely built a defence case.
After sentencing, Tremane's lawyer handed him a business card that simply said: "I'm sorry. You got me at a bad time."
The Final Hours
In the days leading up to the scheduled execution, Wood's mother Linda maintained almost daily contact with journalists, appearing pale and exhausted after her final visit with her son. She had already lost one son when Jake killed himself in prison in 2019.
Wood's 27-year-old son Brendan, a US army infantryman stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, drove 18 hours to witness the execution despite his father and grandmother's pleas not to attend. "I was like, all right, if I was on my deathbed in the hospital, what would I want?" Brendan explained. "I would love to be surrounded by family."
The execution would have used a controversial three-drug cocktail beginning with midazolam, a sedative that pharmacology professor Dr Craig Stevens warned was not a true anaesthetic. This would be followed by a paralytic and finally a drug to induce cardiac arrest.
The Last-Minute Reprieve
At 9:59am, with just one minute remaining until the scheduled execution, prison officials had still not moved witnesses to the execution chamber. Oklahoma Department of Corrections press officer Kay Thompson received an urgent call and suddenly announced: "Clemency. Clemency."
Wood's death sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment without parole. The governor's decision came after even the family of murder victim Ronnie Wipf said they did not want the execution to proceed.
Wood's lawyer, Amanda Bass-Castro Alves, described how her client had mentally prepared himself for death. "When he was told that he would not be killed, he just collapsed on to the floor," she said. "The pressure that he was under being lifted just took everything out of him."
Later that night, Wood collapsed again in his cell, falling off his bed and injuring himself, apparently due to dehydration and stress after not eating since his last meal.
Brendan Wood expressed outrage at the timing of the clemency decision, calling it "cruel and inhumane" and "torture" to wait until the final minute before the scheduled execution.
The case raises serious questions about Oklahoma's execution protocols and the psychological impact of last-minute reprieves on death row inmates and their families.
