UPDATE: On Nov. 13, minutes before Mr. Wood was scheduled to be executed, Gov. Stitt accepted the Pardon and Parole Board’s recommendation and granted clemency to Mr. Wood.
On Nov. 12, LDF sent a letter to Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt strongly urging him to grant clemency to Tremane Wood, a Black man on death row scheduled to be executed on Nov. 13. Mr. Wood is on death row despite, the possible role of racial discrimination in his case, allegations of egregious due process violations that remain unresolved, and compelling evidence of his innocence. In the letter, LDF asks Gov. Stitt to use his authority and abide by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board’s 3-2 recommendation for clemency.
There were undeniable due process concerns in the trial phase of Mr. Wood’s case. His court-appointed trial attorney, John Albert, admitted to drinking alcohol heavily during Mr. Wood’s trial, and other attorneys and court filings allege that he was also using cocaine at the time. He temporarily lost his legal license due to client neglect. Mr. Albert only billed two hours of time outside of court, when the average time a defense attorney billed for a capital case at the time was 3,357 hours per trial. Mr. Albert never visited Tremane Wood and did not accept any phone calls from him or his family.
LDF is particularly concerned that racial bias may have infected Mr. Wood’s trial. In a county that is approximately 14 percent Black, Mr. Wood was convicted by a nearly all-white jury. The jury foreperson, the sole Black person on his jury, explained that she “signed the one for death because everyone was waiting on me. I didn’t want everyone to be here.” A 2017 study found significant racial disparities in Oklahoma’s death sentencing practices based on the race of the victim, concluding that where the victim was a white male, defendants of color like Mr. Wood are twice as likely as white defendant to be sentenced to death. Today, Black people make up the majority of the people of color executed in the modern era of the death penalty. Given this history of racial bias in capital sentencing in Oklahoma, these issues must be taken extremely seriously.
Read the letter here.
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Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation’s first civil rights law organization. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF. Please note that LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights.
