Oklahoma Lawyer Normal Gentner Drummond requested a courtroom Thursday to schedule Tremane Wooden’s execution on or after Sept. 11 this 12 months. The submitting comes weeks after a post-conviction evidentiary listening to yielded compelling proof of what Tremane and his authorized workforce had insisted for years: His demise sentence was the results of an unfair trial.
Tremane, the topic of a HuffPost investigation final 12 months, was sentenced to demise in 2004 for a murder he has constantly maintained he didn’t commit. His brother, who admitted to the killing, was sentenced to life in jail with out the opportunity of parole, a sentencing disparity that Tremane’s present attorneys attribute to the standard of authorized illustration afforded to every brother at trial. It is usually a stark instance of the inconsistent outcomes of felony-murder statutes, which state that anybody concerned in a felony that results in a demise may be held criminally chargeable for that demise, no matter intent or involvement within the precise killing.
The evidentiary listening to, held over three days in April, revealed that prosecutors had misled jurors in regards to the incentives supplied to 2 of their trial witnesses in alternate for his or her testimony. The revelation supplied the likelihood that Tremane, who has argued for many years that he was disadvantaged a good trial on a number of grounds, would possibly lastly get a brand new trial. As an alternative, District Courtroom Decide Susan Stallings adopted the state’s proposed factual findings and authorized conclusions — together with typos within the state’s transient — and denied Tremane request for reduction.
Tremane is interesting the choose’s determination and can pursue a request for clemency from the governor. On Friday, Tremane requested the Oklahoma Courtroom of Felony Appeals to dam the execution till his pending claims had been resolved. However absent intervention from the courts or Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), he faces execution later this 12 months.
Tremane Wooden’s authorized workforce
‘No One Was Supposed To Die’
Tremane grew up in Guthrie, Oklahoma, the youngest of three boys. A few of his earliest recollections are of his father beating his mom and threatening to kill her. When Tremane and his brothers tried to guard their mother, their father beat them, too. As a result of their father was a cop, their mother didn’t really feel that she may flip to the police for assist.
“He has handcuffed me and dragged me down the highway on the outside of the car,” Tremane’s mom, Linda Wooden, informed HuffPost final 12 months. “He has beaten me to the point where you couldn’t even tell what I looked like, knocked my teeth out, broke my nose, broke my bones, and then wouldn’t let me even get any medical help. He’s tied me up and beat me with an extension cord. I got hit in the head with a pipe wrench.”
“It’s really hard to parent your kids when you’re in survival mode,” Linda stated in a video ready for Tremane’s clemency utility. “There’s a saying that says everybody dies but not everybody lives. And we weren’t living, we were just surviving. Just trying to stay alive for another day.”
Each Tremane and his next-eldest brother, Zjaiton Wooden, had been sexually abused by a male neighbor, they later informed separate psychologists. Zjaiton, who glided by Jake, coped with the trauma with medicine and alcohol as a baby. He joined a gang when he was 10 or 11, and introduced Tremane alongside quickly after.
The brothers’ bond was “beyond bounds,” their eldest brother Andre Wooden stated in an interview. “I’ve never seen anyone be that loyal to a person. Tremane would follow Jake to the end of the Earth. Tremane just loved his brother. And Jake loved Tremane. And there was nothing that could break that. Nothing.”
“Jake is Tremane’s idol, he would die for Jake,” Linda informed a social employee in 1994.
Jake was a violent and more and more indignant child who lacked impulse management and realized to make use of his intimidating stature to get what he needed, Linda stated in an interview with HuffPost. She needed to get him psychological well being therapy, however they didn’t have medical health insurance.
Tremane deliberate to spend New Yr’s Eve in 2001 along with his cousins, however Jake satisfied Tremane to exit with him as an alternative. Jake had lately come dwelling from jail, and after years aside, Tremane was desirous to spend time along with his brother, he stated in an interview final 12 months.
The brothers went to a brewery in Oklahoma Metropolis with Jake’s girlfriend, Lanita Bateman, and Tremane’s ex-girlfriend and longtime good friend, Brandy Warden. The women ended up speaking with two males from out of city: Ronnie Wipf and Arnold Kleinsasser, who had been passing by city on their solution to Texas to work on a harvest crew. Ronnie and Arnold grew up in rural Montana in a colony of Hutterites, a non secular group just like the Amish, and had solely lately left the colony.
Ronnie instructed the 4 of them return to a motel room. Brandy and Lanita didn’t wish to go, they’d later say, however felt stress from Jake and Tremane to get cash from the naive out-of-towners. As soon as on the motel, they negotiated a worth of $210 in alternate for intercourse. However earlier than something occurred, Jake and Tremane knocked on the door, sporting masks, lengthy trench coats and leather-based gloves. When Ronnie opened the door, the ladies burst out and the brothers moved in, one armed with a gun and the opposite with a knife.
Arnold gave one of many masked males the $68 in his pockets, however Ronnie fought again. Arnold escaped, hiding in a dumpster for hours within the January chilly. When he made his manner again to the motel, a detective informed him Ronnie had been fatally stabbed.
That evening, Jake informed Lanita he had killed somebody, though he didn’t say how, she stated in an interview. When Tremane’s cousin, Roshonda Jackson, noticed him the subsequent day, he broke down in tears, so distraught that he threw up, she wrote in a 2022 affidavit. “He kept saying he was sorry,” she wrote. “When I asked what was wrong he said, ‘No one was supposed to die!’”
An Absentee Lawyer
Inside per week, Jake, Tremane, Lanita and Brandy had been all arrested and charged with first-degree felony homicide, theft with firearms, and conspiracy to commit theft with a harmful weapon. The state sought prolonged jail sentences for the ladies — who had fled by the point of the killing — and demise sentences for Jake and Tremane.
Brandy, who had three youngsters, together with a son with Tremane, agreed to plead responsible to decreased costs and testify for the state in alternate for a shorter sentence. She took the deal, she stated on the time, as a result of she needed to go dwelling to her youngsters in the future. She didn’t reply to interview requests.
Lanita, who had solely recognized Jake for a number of months, refused to cooperate with the state, citing an unwillingness to assist ship somebody to demise row. She was sentenced to life plus 101 years, with the prospect to hunt parole in 2040, when she will likely be 58 years previous.
Jake was appointed a workforce of three skilled capital protection attorneys from the Oklahoma Indigent Protection System, who totally investigated the crime, in addition to mitigating circumstances, with a view to develop their protection technique.
As a result of it might be a battle of curiosity for the workplace to signify each brothers, Tremane was appointed a personal lawyer named Johnny Albert. Albert was allowed to invoice as much as $20,000 for his work on the case; his co-counsel was allowed an extra $5,000. On the time, protection attorneys for individuals dealing with the demise penalty labored a mean of three,557 hours per trial. Had Albert labored that a lot on the case, he would have earned lower than $6 an hour.
In the end, Albert billed simply two hours of labor outdoors of courtroom appearances in Tremane’s case. He by no means visited his consumer, and didn’t reply telephone calls from Tremane or his household. He did not determine proof that Tremane was not the one who killed Ronnie, or current a compelling image of Tremane’s abusive childhood and Jake’s sway over him. Critically, he didn’t attain out to Lanita, who heard Jake admit to the killing. Lanita would have been keen to testify in assist of Tremane, she wrote in a 2011 declaration.
Albert additionally uncared for to arrange Jake, who insisted on testifying at Tremane’s trial forward of his personal. In the course of the trial, Jake testified that he was the one who stabbed Ronnie, however he additionally falsely claimed that Tremane was not current on the theft — a declare that lacked credibility after Brandy, the mom of Tremane’s little one, testified that Tremane was current.
“I was hoping to not get the death penalty, but I had no faith because Johnny wasn’t prepared,” Tremane stated in an interview final 12 months. “I knew this was a wrap.”
Watching the trial unfold was agonizing, his brother Andre stated. “I’m sitting there, looking at my mom, going, ‘This is the fucking lawyer?’” he stated. “I wanted to get up and say, ‘Can I represent my brother? Because this asshole has no clue what he’s doing.’”
All through the trial, prosecutors argued that Tremane was the precise killer — a model of occasions they’d later straight contradict at Jake’s trial. They didn’t have to show Tremane killed Ronnie with a view to safe a responsible verdict or a demise sentence, nevertheless it was a part of their technique in convincing the jury that Tremane represented the worst-of-the-worst offender. Brandy grew to become their key witness. Though she had fled earlier than Ronnie was stabbed, she testified that Tremane and Jake had been the 2 masked intruders on the motel, and that the smaller of the brothers, Tremane, was holding the knife.
In 2006, Albert was arrested for repeatedly failing to look in courtroom for one more case. He admitted to battling substance abuse, and started inpatient drug and alcohol therapy. The Oklahoma Bar Affiliation charged him with 11 counts {of professional} misconduct after shoppers complained that he uncared for their circumstances. He admitted to the allegations, and his legislation license was suspended for 14 months.
Years later, he handed alongside an apology notice to Tremane, scribbled on the again of his enterprise card. “Treman Im sorry for everything in the past. You got me at a bad time and its not your fault. Its mine. I will do anything I can to help you.”
Two of Albert’s former shoppers have had their demise sentences tossed after a trial courtroom discovered that that they had acquired ineffective help of counsel. However appellate courts have refused to grant Tremane the identical reduction.
Initially, the Oklahoma Courtroom of Felony Appeals discovered that Albert’s decline started shortly after Tremane’s trial. Tremane then introduced affidavits from two of Albert’s former shoppers who stated they gave him medicine in alternate for authorized providers and noticed him use cocaine steadily, beginning properly earlier than Tremane’s trial. However the OCCA once more denied reduction, this time on procedural grounds. His petition was too just like his earlier ineffective help of counsel declare and he ought to have introduced this proof earlier, the courtroom wrote.
In 2019, the Supreme Courtroom declined to assessment the decrease courtroom’s denial of Tremane’s habeas petition, which made him eligible for execution. Months later, Jake died by suicide in his jail cell.
Secret Cooperation Agreements
Prosecutors repeatedly informed jurors that Brandy would spend 45 years in jail on account of her plea deal. However her sentence was later modified to 35 years, and with “good time” credit score, she was launched after 12 years.
In the course of the current evidentiary listening to, former Oklahoma County Assistant District Lawyer George Burnett, one of many prosecutors in Tremane’s trial, testified that the prosecution’s plea settlement with Brandy represented the total extent of their deal. Federal public defender Amanda Bass Castro Alves, one in all Tremane’s present attorneys, confronted Burnett with proof that his plea settlement with one other witness for the prosecution didn’t mirror the very fact the prosecutors dismissed and downgraded the witness’ pending felonies after Tremane was sentenced to demise.
Burnett then testified that the total scope of the state’s settlement with Brandy was documented in a “memorandum,” not within the plea settlement. After studying that neither attorneys for Tremane or the state had seen the memorandum, the choose obtained a replica from Warden’s case file on the Oklahoma County Public Defender’s workplace. It clearly confirmed, opposite to prosecutors’ claims at Tremane’s trial, that Brandy would obtain a sentence of 35 years in alternate for testifying in opposition to her co-defendants.
Requested within the evidentiary listening to why he informed jurors Brandy would spend 45 years in jail, Burnett stated he “made a mistake probably.”
“Never underestimate my — my ability to say something stupid to a jury,” Burnett stated.
On the time, Brandy was serving a deferred felony sentence for an unrelated crime, which means her sentencing was delayed and her case might be dismissed upon profitable completion of probation. After she was charged with felony homicide, probation officers filed a violation report, recommending “acceleration” of her deferred sentence. However Payne County Assistant District Lawyer Tom Lee opted to “hold off,” he wrote in a notice on the report.
Lee testified on the evidentiary listening to that he had a standing settlement with the Oklahoma County district lawyer’s workplace to pursue or forgo accelerating deferred sentences to felony convictions to help with prosecutions. He stated he didn’t converse with anybody from the Oklahoma County DA’s workplace earlier than deciding to not pursue Brandy’s sentence — however he additionally admitted he didn’t bear in mind writing the notice about “hold[ing] off.”
Had Brandy’s felony been accelerated, she wouldn’t have been eligible for a sentence modification from 45 to 35 years, Bass Castro Alves wrote in a current courtroom submitting. This association allowed prosecutors to emphasise Brandy’s lack of a felony file to jurors.
“The prosecutors’ suppression of their full agreement with Warden undermined [Tremane’s] defense and misled the jury by depriving it of information critical to jurors’ assessment of Warden’s truthfulness, credibility, and motivations for testifying to the story she told the jury,” Bass Castro Alves wrote in her proposed factual findings and authorized conclusions.
“It allowed prosecutors to convincingly argue in closing at the first stage that Warden was not some ‘big conspirator’ but rather was a girl who ‘know[s] one rule, you do what Termane told you to do,’” she continued. (Tremane’s identify is misspelled as “Termane” all through his trial information.)
Of their proposed factual findings and authorized conclusions, the state denied any prosecutorial misconduct at trial and claimed that even when there was an undisclosed deal, Tremane had did not show that it might have resulted in a unique final result at trial.
The choose signed the state’s really useful findings verbatim.
