By a 3-2 vote this afternoon, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended clemency for Tremane Wood, who faces an execution date later this month for a 2002 murder.
Unless a pending appeal alleging the withholding of exculpatory evidence is upheld by either the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court, Wood’s ultimate fate now rests in the hands of Gov. Kevin Stitt, who can now choose to commute Wood’s sentence to life in prison with or without parole. Like he has done with other clemency recommendations, however, Stitt can ignore the board’s suggestion and carry out Wood’s execution, which is scheduled for Nov. 13.
A judge sentenced Wood to death in 2004 after his first-degree murder conviction in the death of 19-year-old Ronald Wipf at an Oklahoma City motel during a 2002 robbery. His brother, Zjaiton “Jake” Wood, testified in Tremane’s defense prior to his own trial. Jake Wood said he stabbed Wipf with a knife and that his brother had not been at the motel, a claim contradicted by other testimony. Tried and convicted after his brother, Jake Wood received a sentence of life in prison without parole instead of the death penalty. He died by suicide in prison in 2019.
Wipf was a migrant farm worker from Montana who had stopped in OKC to celebrate New Year’s Eve with his friend and coworker, Arnold Jonathan Kleinsasser. The two men were members of Hutterite colonies. At a restaurant, the pair met Lanita Sue Bateman and Brandy Lynn Warden, who were girlfriends of the Wood brothers. Bateman and Warden agreed to have sex with Wipf and Kleinsasser for $210.
But prosecutors at the time said the meeting and offer for sex was part of a robbery plan that culminated in the stabbing death of Wipf. During the melee inside the motel room, Kleinsasser escaped and ran away.
On Wednesday, Tremane Wood’s attorneys argued before the board that he originally received poor legal representation from an attorney who was in the throes of alcohol and cocaine addiction and who did not ask the judge to relay instructions to the jury during Tremane Wood’s trial. That attorney, John Albert, died in 2018. He later apologized to Tremane Wood in a letter.
Tremane Wood’s current attorney, Amanda Bass-Casto Alves, told the board he was sorry for his actions that led to the death of Wipf, but that his punishment did not fit the crime.
“Over the last 23 years, Tremane has carried the weight of how his poor decisions as a 22-year-old contributed to Ronnie losing his life and causing Ronnie’s family immeasurable sorrow,” she said. “He’s also very aware of how his actions harmed Arnold as well. But we are also here today because the criminal justice system has failed Tremane Wood. Tremane is the only person on Oklahoma’s death row who is facing execution for a felony murder conviction where prosecutors never had to prove that he killed or intended to kill anyone before he could be sentenced to death. Tremane is also the only one of his co-defendants who received a death sentence because of his felony murder conviction. Tremane’s older brother, Jake, who admitted to numerous people that he killed Ronnie Wipf, including immediately after the crime, was sentenced to life in prison without parole.”
Bass-Casto Alves told board members Tremane Wood’s defense was vastly inferior to his brother’s legal team, which ultimately led to him receiving the death penalty.
“The difference between Tremane’s and his brother’s sentencing outcomes in this case boils down to resources,” she said. “The criminal justice system gave his brother, Jake, the benefit of three experienced capital defense lawyers and two investigators with the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System. That team vigorously defended Jake against the state’s pursuit of his execution. Meanwhile, the criminal justice system gave Tremane an attorney who was abusing substances while representing him, who never met with him except when they were in court, who did no investigation before the trial, who didn’t bother to challenge one of the aggravators against Tremane that his brother’s lawyers successfully prevented from being used to support the death penalty against Jake and who didn’t make sure that the jury was properly instructed and understood their duty to deliberate in good faith over Tremane’s punishment.”
Drummond: Tremane Wood made ‘deliberate, predatory attacks’
At Wednesday’s Pardon and Parole Board hearing, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said Tremane Wood is not the reformed and regretful person that his counsel has claimed.
Testifying along with assistant attorney generals Christina Burns and Samatha Baggett, Drummond said Wood would be a danger to society if he is ultimately released from prison.
“Tremane Wood represents the very kind of violent offender that threatens the safety of our communities,” Drummond, a 2026 gubernatorial candidate, told the board. “The crimes for which he was convicted are not acts of desperation or impulse. They were deliberate, predatory attacks on innocent strangers who crossed into the path simply because they were seen as easy targets.”
Burns told the board Tremane Wood and his current attorneys are attempting to muddy the water in an attempt to avert what is a lawful punishment.
“We have heard so much about Tremane Wood this morning, so much about how he is the victim of an unjust legal system which unfairly sentenced him to death for a murder he claims his brother actually committed,” Burns said. “Tremane Wood’s current iteration of avoiding responsibility for his actions on the night of New Year’s Eve 2001 consists of, among other things, attempting to resurrect meritless legal arguments, taking statements, facts or circumstances out of context to suit his clemency narrative, claiming that he always felt remorse and even misleading his own experts of how he has truly reformed his life since his conviction.”
Baggett said that, while in prison, Tremane Wood has accrued multiple misconduct penalties and has repeatedly disobeyed prison staff while also possessing cell phones against prison rules and fighting with another death-row inmate in June 2024. He also refused a drug test, possessed illegal substances and has remained affiliated with gangs while in prison, Baggett said.
“This is his true light,” Baggett said.
Wood: ‘This weighs heavily on me’
Tremane Wood briefly spoke on his own behalf during the closing moments of Wednesday’s hearing.
“Not a day goes by in my life that I don’t think about Ronnie and how much his mom and dad are suffering because they don’t have their son anymore,” Wood said. “They can’t see him, talk to him. They aren’t able to watch him grow up and have his own family. That still weighs heavily on me to this day. I regret my role in everything that happened that night.”
Wood told board members that he “loved my brother.”
“He was my best friend, and he helped raise me the best way he knew how,” Wood said. “And when I was young, he used to protect me. He did all that while fighting his own demons. Now I look back on that night, I realize I should have been a big brother. I should have been the one to say, ‘No, we’re not doing this.’ But instead, I went along with it and participated in it. I accept full responsibility for my part.”
As the hearing concluded, Pardon and Parole Board Chairman Richard Miller and member Sean Malloy voted against recommending clemency for Wood, while members Susan Stava, Kevin Buchanan, and Robert Reavis II voted in favor.
In a press release, leaders of the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty said the state bungled the case in Wood’s original trial and that he was not represented adequately during those proceedings.
“The Pardon and Parole Board rightly granted clemency and recognizes that justice at the hands of the state has been miscarried,” the organization’s chairwoman, Elizabeth Overman, said. “The death penalty is wrong, and executing an innocent man does not make Oklahoma a safer or more orderly state.”
Drummond said the board’s decision was disappointing and that he would lobby Stitt to refuse clemency.
“After this dangerous criminal took a young man’s life, he stayed fully active in the criminal world from behind bars,” Drummond said in a statement. “I am disappointed by the Pardon and Parole Board’s decision today, but appreciate their thoughtful deliberation. My office will continue to pursue justice for Ronnie Wipf. We intend to make our case to the governor on why clemency should not be granted and why the death sentence, as determined by a jury, should be carried out.”
In 2021, Stitt commuted the death sentence for Julius Jones to a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. But Stitt has also ignored clemency recommendations for Bigler Stouffer and Emmanuel Littlejohn, who were ultimately executed.
(Correction: This article was updated minutes after its publication to correct reference to the year of the murder.)
