Oklahoma Death Row Prisoner Tremane Wood Petitions the U.S. Supreme Court
To Review Evidence Oklahoma County Prosecutors Withheld Key Evidence
And Presented False Testimony at Death Penty Trial
And to Urge the High Court to Review Ex Parte Emails Between Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals Prejudicing Tremane Wood’s Request for a New Trial
(October 30, 2025) – Today, death row prisoner Tremane Wood petitioned the United States Supreme Court to review his claims that Oklahoma County prosecutors committed misconduct by lying to the jury and hiding deals with witnesses in exchange for their testimony against Mr. Wood at his 2004 trial.
Mr. Wood was convicted of felony murder and sentenced to death for participating in the robbery of Ronnie Wipf, even though his violent older brother and co-defendant, Jake, admitted that he and not Tremane actually killed the victim during the robbery. In separate trials, Jake received a life sentence despite being the actual killer, and two female co- defendants also received lesser sentences.
At an evidentiary hearing earlier this year, one of the prosecutors admitted under oath that the prosecution hid from the jury benefits witnesses received in exchange for their testimony against Mr. Wood. After this powerful admission, the prosecution’s secret agreement with the key witness against Mr. Wood came to light in the middle of the hearing proving that the prosecution obtained Mr. Wood’s death sentence by cheating.
While the OCCA was reviewing Mr. Wood’s request for a new trial, secret emails between Attorney General Gentner Drummond and Presiding Judge Gary Lumpkin of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals were made public, showing that Drummond secretly accused Mr. Wood of criminal conduct in prison and asked the Criminal Appeals Court to delay Tremane Wood’s execution to help the Attorney General defeat his clemency request.
After the secret emails came to light, Mr. Wood’s attorneys moved to sanction Drummond’s office for misconduct and to recuse the Judge with whom Drummond was secretly emailing. The OCCA denied both requests. Then, just days later, the OCCA denied Mr. Wood’s request for a new trial in a decision written by the same judge with whom Drummond was secretly emailing.
In his petition to the United States Supreme Court, Mr. Wood raises claims under both Brady v. Maryland and Napue v. Illinois based on the evidence proving that the Bob Macy-era Oklahoma County District
Attorney’s Office withheld evidence about deals given to two key witnesses in their pending felony cases in exchange for their testimony against Mr. Wood, and that the prosecutors allowed these witness to testify falsely at trial.
Mr. Wood’s petition argues that:
“This case is a repeat of Glossip v. Oklahoma, 604 U.S. 226 (2025). Like Glossip, this case involves a decades-long effort by Oklahoma County prosecutors to keep their rewards to cooperating witnesses hidden from prisoners whom the state seeks to execute.” (Petition at 3.)
Mr. Wood’s petition also charges that:
“While [the OCCA] was considering Mr. Wood’s case the presiding judge of that court received ex parte communications alleging that Mr. Wood had recently committed serious misconduct in prison, and how to shield that evidence from him so as to advantage the state’s case against clemency and to keep Mr. Wood’s execution on schedule. The judge not only refused to recuse himself after learning this information; he wrote the decision rejecting Mr. Wood’s Brady and Napue claims.” (Petition at 3.)
Mr. Wood’s petition to the United States Supreme Court will be supported by ethics experts. Representative JJ Humphrey will also file a brief in support of a stay and certiorari that describes a plague of state misconduct infecting capital cases tried by the same office–and attorney–who prosecuted Mr. Wood. The brief explains that in case after case, they have hidden evidence that could have exonerated the accused. But the Oklahoma courts have done more than turn a blind eye: they have swept the misconduct under the rug.
Counsel for Representative Humphrey, Amy Knight, said of the situation in Oklahoma, “I wish the state prosecutors and courts had the same enthusiasm for fundamental fairness and the rule of law that it appears to have for executing its own citizens.” Ms. Knight and her colleagues at Phillips Black, Inc. represented Richard Glossip before the Supreme Court.
For more information or to speak to an attorney for Mr. Wood, please contact Amanda_Bass-CastroAlves@fd.org.
Case Background
New evidence proves the prosecutors lied to the jury and hid deals with witnesses in exchange for their testimony.
Tremane was prosecuted in the immediate aftermath of the notorious Bob Macy era within the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office. The prosecutor who sought the death penalty against Tremane has a long pattern of misconduct in death penalty cases, including in the cases of Richard Glossip, David Flippo, Marcus Cargle, and Brenda Andrew.
Newly discovered evidence shows that the prosecutors in Tremane’s case committed misconduct by lying to the jury and hiding the deals they gave witnesses in exchange for their testimony against Tremane. At an evidentiary hearing earlier this year, one of the prosecutors admitted under oath that the prosecution lied to the jury and hid the benefits witnesses received in exchange for their testimony against Tremane. After this powerful admission, the prosecution’s secret agreement with the key witness against Tremane came to light in the middle of the hearing proving that the prosecution obtained Tremane’s death sentence by cheating. Despite this compelling evidence, Oklahoma’s courts have refused to grant Tremane relief and the State is moving forward with his execution.
Tremane’s defense counsel was an alcoholic and addict who did virtually no work on the case.
Tremane Wood’s trial lawyer has admitted in a sworn statement that he was abusing alcohol while representing Tremane, “drinking on a regular basis.” There is also new evidence that the lawyer was addicted to cocaine while representing Tremane. The trial lawyer also admitted that he “did not have the time to adequately represent Tremane[,]” “did very little to investigate and prepare Mr. Wood’s case for trial[,]” and “met with him on a very limited basis and only when we were in court.”
As a result of counsel’s failure to investigate or prepare for Tremane’s defense, the trial’s penalty phase began and ended in a single afternoon.
Moreover, Tremane’s lawyer was paid a total of just $10,000 for the case – an amount that would have equated to less than $1.00 per hour if he had done the work required to adequately defend a capital case.
By contrast, Tremane’s brother – the person who admitted killing Ronnie Wipf – was represented by three experienced capital defense lawyers and two investigators who successfully fought to defend him against the death penalty. That means the admitted killer was sentenced to life without parole while Tremane was sentenced to death.
Racial prejudice infected Tremane’s trial.
In this case involving Black defendants and a white murder victim, the prosecutors successfully removed nearly every Black person from the jury pool. Tremane’s jury was made of up 10 white people and a single Black person (the 12th juror was Hispanic). The only Black juror has revealed that she felt “under pressure” from the majority-white jurors to vote for death. This outcome is consistent with the findings of a 2017 study that a Black defendant in Oklahoma charged with the killing of a white person is two to three times more likely to receive a death sentence based on race alone.
Tremane’s jury never heard powerful available mitigation evidence.
Because of these systemic failures, Tremane’s jury did not have critical information that would have supported a life sentence. For example, the jury never heard that on the night of the crime, Tremane’s violent and abusive older brother pressured him to participate in the robbery that led to his brother killing the robbery victim.
The jury also never learned about Tremane’s profound remorse immediately following the crime. According to sworn statements from two witnesses who trial counsel never bothered to interview, in the aftermath of the crime, “It is hard for me to put into words the state Tremane was in . . . He was sobbing uncontrollably.” “Tremane was so distraught that he threw up,” and “kept saying he was sorry” and that “[n]o one was supposed to die!.”
Nor did the jury learn that Tremane suffers from PTSD as a result of violence and neglect that he witnessed and endured beginning as a small child. The abusive older brother who led him to commit the crime was the closest thing Tremane had to an adult protector due to his absent parents’ neglect.
Relatedly, the jury never knew that, like many traumatized and impoverished children of color, Tremane never received the sustained support, care, or treatment he needed from schools or child services agencies. Instead, Tremane was a victim of the school-to- prison pipeline. He was over-punished for school infractions by being suspended from school for extended periods of time which forced Tremane to navigate the streets on his own, unsupervised, and vulnerable to gang influences that propelled him towards prison.
Tremane Is Deeply Remorseful And Has Earned the Trust and Respect of Correctional Staff.
Tremane was devastated by Ronnie Wipf’s death and has consistently expressed deep remorse for his role in the robbery.
The jury never heard powerful evidence from witnesses who were with Tremane after the crime attesting to Tremane’s deep and sincere remorse in the robbery’s aftermath for his role in Ronnie Wipf’s death, and to his insistence that “No one was supposed to die!” In the absence of this powerful evidence, prosecutors argued to the jury that Tremane deserved the death penalty because “he is not sorry, . . . justice means the death penalty for Tremane Wood who murdered without remorse.”
For more information or to speak to an attorney for Mr. Wood, please contact Amanda_Bass-CastroAlves@fd.org.