In a extremely uncommon transfer, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board on Wednesday voted to suggest clemency for Tremane Wooden, a person sentenced to dying for a killing his brother admitted to committing.
The three-2 vote was a surprising consequence in a case the place the Oklahoma lawyer basic has personally intervened to attempt to safe Wooden’s execution. The choice over whether or not to grant mercy to Wooden now goes to Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), who has solely spared one man from execution since changing into governor in 2019. Wooden has additionally requested the Oklahoma Court docket of Legal Appeals and the Supreme Court docket to evaluate his allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and keep his execution, which is at the moment scheduled for Nov. 13.
As HuffPost chronicled in two earlier function tales, Wooden’s case is marked by allegations that his dying sentence was the results of each his severely impaired trial lawyer and prosecutors who performed soiled. Regardless of the frequent perception that the prolonged appeals course of in capital circumstances ensures that constitutional violations at trial can be rectified earlier than the execution date, Wooden has been denied aid at each flip.
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In 2002, Wooden, his older brother and two girls had been charged with first-degree homicide for killing a person named Ronnie Wipf throughout a botched theft. Wipf died of a single stab wound, however underneath the state’s so-called felony homicide statute, prosecutors didn’t need to show who truly killed him with a purpose to safe homicide convictions — solely that they every participated within the theft that led to his dying.
At Wooden’s trial, prosecutors argued that he stabbed Wipf — solely to flip their story at his brother’s trial the next 12 months and argue that the brother was the killer. Wooden, who denied stabbing Wipf, was represented by a lawyer scuffling with drug habit who billed nearly no work on the case, and he was sentenced to dying. His older brother, who testified that he had killed Wipf, had a reliable group of dying penalty public defenders, and was sentenced to life with out parole.
Wooden’s lawyer, who died in 2018, admitted to shopper neglect related to substance abuse, leading to him briefly dropping his regulation license after representing Wooden. Two of his former shoppers had their dying sentences thrown out on the premise of ineffective help of counsel, however courts have repeatedly denied Wooden’s appeals for a brand new trial on procedural grounds.
Earlier this 12 months, Wooden and his attorneys uncovered proof that prosecutors lied to jurors in regards to the incentives supplied to 2 of their witnesses in trade for his or her testimony. Nonetheless, District Choose Susan Stallings denied Wooden aid, submitting a ruling that was almost equivalent to the model proposed by the state. In latest weeks, particulars in regards to the relationship between Stallings and Fern Smith, one of many prosecutors accused of misconduct in Wooden’s trial, has make clear Stallings’ actions.
Stallings labored for Smith within the Oklahoma County district lawyer’s workplace proper out of regulation college and has cited Smith as a guiding affect in her profession. In court docket proceedings in a separate case, Smith revealed that she and Smith vacationed collectively in Spain, Vegas and England within the Nineties. Smith additionally testified that in Could, Stallings e-mailed her a duplicate of the ruling clearing Smith of misconduct. Within the e mail trade, which HuffPost has reviewed, Smith praises Stallings “thorough analysis and well-reasoned opinion.” In response, Stallings says, “Which I can’t take credit for. It’s the proposed Findings from the [attorney general’s] office. They did do an outstanding job.”
Regardless of the well-documented points in Wooden’s case, state Lawyer Common Gentner Drummond, who’s operating for governor on a tough-on-crime platform, has taken extraordinary measures to attempt to block Wooden from receiving mercy. Over the summer season Drummond secretly requested Oklahoma Legal Court docket of Appeals Presiding Choose Gary Lumpkin, who was overseeing Wooden’s case, to postpone Wooden’s execution date to provide the lawyer basic’s workplace extra time to construct a felony case associated to contraband telephones present in Wooden’s cell. After initially entertaining the request, Lumpkin reminded Drummond he might solely contemplate requests made in a court docket submitting. Drummond declined to take action, stating he didn’t wish to “tip off Mr. Wood as to the nature of the investigation.”
Drummond’s workplace by no means charged Wooden with against the law in relation to the telephones. However his presentation within the clemency listening to relied closely on texts and photographs allegedly recovered from Wooden’s telephones to accuse him of utilizing and promoting medicine, being an energetic gang member, and arranging the beating of one other prisoner who Wooden stated killed his feminine cousin.
“His pattern of violence and deceit has not ceased, it has merely adapted. The same vicious intent that fueled his original crimes endures today, revealing a hardened, unrepentant mind driven by deceit and a complete disregard for human life,” Drummond said within the listening to. “The danger remains as clear and present as ever — and no prison, no prison cell will protect society from his evil and ongoing deeds.”
“The murder of Ronnie Wipf stands as a horrific reminder of how cruel and calculated one individual can be, and the evidence proves that Tremane Wood was Ronnie’s executioner,” Drummond stated.
Stalling, Smith and Lumpkin all didn’t reply to requests for touch upon HuffPost’s earlier reporting on the case. Drummond’s workplace beforehand declined to touch upon its dealing with of the contraband telephones however asserted that Wooden acquired a good trial.
In the course of the listening to, Wooden’s lawyer, Amanda Bass Castro Alves, defined to the board the assorted authorized points in Wooden’s case, and the truth that Wipf’s mother and father and the surviving sufferer of the theft oppose Wooden’s execution. Wooden’s presentation included quotes from Barbara Wipf, the sufferer’s mom, to HuffPost stating her need for the state to permit Wooden to dwell.
Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board
“The compassion and the mercy that the victims in this case have extended to Tremane, rooted in their life-affirming Christian values and in their recognition that we have all fallen short is nothing short of transformative,” Bass Castro Alves stated. “Mrs. Wipf and Arnold [Kleinsasser] are showing Tremane — and in fact, are showing all of us — that even when irreparable harm has been inflicted, there is a path forward beyond vengeance, a path forward that is instead paved by forgiveness, by compassion and by mercy.” (Kleinsasser, a good friend of Wipf’s, is a surviving sufferer of the botched theft.)
However when a board member requested why the victims weren’t current, assistant Lawyer Common Christina Burns didn’t acknowledge the victims’ opposition to the execution. “Our understanding of the victims’ position in this case is that they did not want to be involved. They also wanted to see justice done and they left that to the Attorney General’s office to seek justice for Mr. Wood.”
Cindy Birdwell, Wooden’s sixth-grade trainer, informed the board she recalled Wooden as a “bright-eyed” boy who introduced her a home made Valentine’s Day card that was nearly as tall as him. “Since that time, I have learned that Tremane came to school carrying a lot of pain that a little boy should never have had to carry. He was a victim of abuse — sexual, physical, emotional — and I never knew,” Birdwell stated. “I have carried such guilt about that.”
Wooden’s 17-year-old niece, Brooklyn Wooden, described Wooden because the “glue” of their household and her “best friend,” who helped her navigate bullying, self-harm and extreme despair. “All I can ask is for you to put yourself in my shoes, where you’re about to lose your best friend and the only person that keeps you up and going in the morning. I always look forward to that one, single 20-minute phone call,” she stated. “All I ask is you, as the clemency board, please spare my uncle.”
Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board
On the finish of the listening to, Wooden was given 20 minutes to talk. He described the crime as “the biggest regret of my life” and took accountability for his position within the theft that led to Wipf’s dying.
“It never should have happened,” Wooden stated. “I had the power to say no that night and to say, ‘We’re not going to do this.’ I could have prevented Ronnie’s death. I could have prevented Arnold from being in that situation and the trauma that he suffered. All the damage coming from that night, which destroyed their family as well as mine, was preventable. And I’m the one who could have prevented it. Having the courage to stand up and man up and say that night — and say no, could have prevented all of this from happening. And for not doing that. I’m truly sorry.”
“I’m not a monster, I’m not a killer,” Wooden continued. “I never was and I never have been. The person I am deep inside is a son, a brother, a father, a uncle, a friend and a grandfather — something that I never thought I would live to experience.”
He closed with a plea: “I ask you, board members, to see something in my life worth value.”
