The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has decided convicted murderer Tremane Wood should be executed next after all.
The court set the execution for Nov. 13 despite complications caused by an ongoing drug trafficking investigation.
Wood, 45, has a death sentence for the fatal stabbing of a migrant farm worker on New Year’s Day 2002 in Oklahoma City. He denies being the stabber.
The court announced the execution date in a Sept. 12 order.
Wood is being held at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Executions are carried out there by lethal injection.
The next execution in Oklahoma has been set for Nov. 13. The execution gurney is shown in this image from a video released by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond had suggested the court schedule an execution for convicted murderer Kendrick Simpson instead. The AG made the request because Wood’s attorneys want off the case because of the drug trafficking investigation.
Wood is accused of distributing drugs in prison and of ordering a “hit” on another inmate. “To accomplish these acts, it is more likely than not that Wood is working in collusion with prison personnel,” Drummond told the court’s presiding judge in July.
Wood’s attorneys have described the new allegations as “inflated and distorted.”
Wood became next in line for execution after the state carried out the lethal injection of John Fitzgerald Hanson on June 12.
The AG at first asked for a Sept. 11 execution date for Wood. He later asked for a date in October because of the investigation. Then, in a switch up, he suggested Simpson be executed next.
He explained he made that suggestion so that Wood’s new attorneys can have enough time to prepare for a clemency hearing.
Wood’s current attorneys are with the Arizona federal public defender’s office. They are asking for judicial permission to withdraw from representing him further.
If the execution is carried out in November, it will be the third − and last − in Oklahoma in 2025.
What to know about Wood’s case
The murder victim, Ronnie Wipf, and a friend were from Montana. They were traveling through Oklahoma back to Texas to do harvest work.
Both went to a motel with two women they had met at Bricktown Brewery in Oklahoma City on New Year’s Eve 2001. The women actually were setting them up to be robbed. The women pretended once at the motel to be prostitutes.Wipf, 19, was stabbed in the chest during a struggle after two masked men rushed into the motel room. Prosecutors contend Wood did the stabbing.
At his 2004 trial, his older brother claimed to be the stabber. Jurors found Wood guilty of first-degree murder anyway and chose the death sentence.
The brother, Zjaiton Jake Wood, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder. He committed suicide in prison in 2019.
“Tremane was devastated by Ronnie Wipf’s death and has consistently expressed deep remorse for his role in the robbery,” his attorneys said in an Aug. 28 news release.
Wood challenged his conviction again last year. He claimed he had newly discovered evidence of prosecutorial misconduct. The Court of Criminal Appeals ruled against him Sept. 2.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Third execution of 2025 in Oklahoma has been scheduled for Nov. 13
