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Thread: Tremane Latron Wood - Oklahoma Death Row

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    Tremane Latron Wood - Oklahoma Death Row


    Tremane Latron Wood


    Summary of Offense:

    On January 1, 2002, Ronald Wipf and Arnold Kleinsasser picked up two women who said they were prostitutes, and took them back to their hotel room. In fact, the women were girlfriends of Termane Wood and his brother Zjaiton who were setting Wipf and Kleinsasser up to be robbed. The masked Wood brothers burst into the hotel room and killed Wipf with a stab wound to the chest as he struggled during the robbery. Kleinsasser was hit over the head with a knife, but managed to escape. He testified and identified Termane Wood as the person who had stabbed Wipf. However, Zjaiton testified that he, not Termane, had stabbed Wipf. At the time, Zjaiton was awaiting his own capital murder trial for the Wipf stabbing. The brothers had committed another armed robbery earlier in the evening. In mitigation, the defense presented Termane’s mother, who pleaded for his life.

    Wood has been on death row since May 18, 2004.

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On August 2, 2010, Wood filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/okl...cv00829/77749/

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    Appeals court upholds death sentence in 2002 killing

    A man convicted of stabbing a 19-year-old Montana man to death in a motel room on New Year's Day 2002 has lost his appeal to have his death sentence overturned.

    The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the death penalty given to Tremane Wood by an Oklahoma County jury that convicted him of first-degree murder for the Jan. 1, 2002, death of Ronald Reuben Wipf. Wood, 31, also was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for armed robbery and conspiracy to commit a felony in the case.

    In its nine-page opinion, the appellate court rejected Wood's claims that he has received ineffective legal assistance since appealing his conviction and sentence. Wood claims his appellate counsel has not alleged that the defense attorney at Wood's trial was ineffective for not hiring a forensic pathologist to challenge the victim's autopsy report.

    The court said it rejected Wood's appeal "because he cannot show a reasonable probability that the outcome of his trial would have been different had post-conviction counsel done so."

    Wood's post-conviction attorney, James T. Rowan, said Wednesday he was disappointed in the ruling. "But it's only one hurdle in a long train of hurdles," Rowan said.

    The appeals court ruling states that Wood's first name has sometimes been misspelled Termane in the state court record. It also says Wood has a separate appeal pending in U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City.

    Prosecutors alleged that Wood and his brother, Zjaiton Wood, 34, robbed Wipf and another Montana man, Arnold Jonathan Kleinsasser, before the stabbing. Zjaiton Wood was sentenced to life in prison without parole and an additional 120 years for the robbery and killing.

    Wipf and Kleinsasser were working on a harvesting crew at a farm in Chickasha. The two men were members of the Hutterites of the Riverview Colony, a religious sect in Montana, and had returned to Oklahoma after spending the holidays with their families.

    Prosecutors allege that Kleinsasser and Wipf met two women, Lanita Sue Bateman and Brandy Lynn Warden, at a restaurant on New Year's Eve 2001 and that they offered to have sex with the pair for $210. But prosecutors alleged that the women were setting the men up to be robbed.

    Bateman, 29, was sentenced to life in prison plus 101 years for her role in the crime. Warden, 30, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and testified against Bateman in exchange for a 45-year prison sentence.

    http://muskogeephoenix.com/statenews...n-2002-killing

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On October 30, 2015, Wood's habeas petition was DENIED in Federal District Court.

    https://docs.justia.com/cases/federa...0829/77749/100

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    On January 4, 2016, Wood filed an appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ci...s/ca10/16-6001

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On November 14, 2017, oral argument will be heard in Wood's appeal before the Tenth Circuit.

    https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/...r_2017_Cal.pdf

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On August 9, 2018, the Tenth Circuit DENIED Wood's appeal. The panel was made up of Chief Judge Tymkovich (G.W. Bush), Judge Matheson (Obama) and Judge Bacharach (Obama).

    https://law.justia.com/cases/federal...018-08-09.html

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    In today's orders, the United States Supreme Court declined to review Wood's petition for certiorari.

    Lower Ct: Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma
    Case Numbers: (PCD-2017-653)
    Decision Date: August 28, 2017

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....c/17-6891.html

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    Why Did SCOTUS Sit on 2 Capital Cases for a Year?

    By Kent Scheidegger
    crimeandconsequences.com

    Congress enacted the Crime Victims Rights Act, 18 U.S.C. §3771, in 2004, providing among other rights for victims of federal offenses "the right to proceedings free from unreasonable delay." Two years later, Congress amended §3771 to extend its protection to federal habeas corpus proceedings in state criminal cases. It did not occur to Congress to protect victims from unreasonable delay by the United States Supreme Court on certiorari review of state cases because that had never been a problem.

    It is now.

    Wood v. Oklahoma, No. 17-6891, and Jones v. Oklahoma, No. 17-6943, involve the same issue the Supreme Court appropriately put to rest over 30 years ago in McCleskey v. Kemp. See my 2012 law review article for details. Now they want to dredge it back up with yet another study conducted by notorious anti-death-penalty advocates. Note that this is a claim that has nothing whatever to do with whether they committed the crimes and only a very remote relation to whether death is a just and proportionate penalty for their conduct. The Oklahoma courts said, correctly, that such a claim could not be raised for the first time in a successive post-conviction petition -- Wood's third and Jones's second. Such petitions should be reserved for true miscarriages of justice.

    The State filed its brief in opposition in Wood on January 29, 2018. The case was distributed for conference twenty-six times. This extraordinary number of relists has been the subject of considerable speculation. What on earth could possibly be taking so long? It does not take a year to say "Yes, we will hear it" or "No, we will not." It couldn't be that the Court was going to summarily reverse and was writing a per curiam opinion. The Court does not summarily reverse a decision when it rests on a valid state procedural ground and especially when deciding the merits in the petitioner's favor would require overruling a landmark precedent.

    So the only possibility that seemed to be left was that one or more Justices were writing opinions concurring or dissenting from denial of certiorari. But for nearly a year?

    Today, the Court denied certiorari without comment and with no separate opinions. What?! They held up long-overdue justice for a year for nothing?

    This is conduct unbecoming the high court, or any court for that matter. Victims deserve more respect, even if the statute does not specifically apply to this proceeding.

    http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/...pita.html#more

  10. #10
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On November 1, 2018, the Tenth Circuit DENIED Wood's petition for en banc rehearing.

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/Search....c\18-8666.html

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