An Oklahoma demise row inmate was hospitalized Thursday after being discovered unresponsive in his cell, officers stated, simply hours after being granted clemency on the identical day he was scheduled to be executed.
Forty-six-year-old Tremane Wooden was granted clemency Thursday morning by Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt. After that call got here down, Wooden met along with his attorneys for “a number of hours,” based on a press release from the Oklahoma Division of Corrections. The company stated it then moved him off demise row and into a brand new cell.
In some unspecified time in the future, a correctional officer discovered Wooden “unresponsive” in his new cell, the division stated, and jail employees decided that he had “skilled a medical occasion that resulted in accidents.”
Wooden was taken to a close-by hospital “out of utmost warning,” the place medical doctors discovered that his “medical occasion” was because of “dehydration and stress,” the division stated.
Following the incident, Wooden additionally took half in a telephone name with ODOC spokesperson Kay Thompson, the division stated, during which he informed her that he could not “actually clarify what occurred.”
He allegedly informed Thompson that he had laid all the way down to sleep and “will need to have rolled off his bunk,” disclosing that the following factor he remembered was waking “up within the infirmary” with “[his] head busted and [his] lip busted,” based on the division.
“He additionally confirmed that nobody else was in his cell on the time of the medical occasion and that he didn’t do something deliberately to trigger it,” the division stated in its information launch.
Within the telephone name, Wooden allegedly indicated to Thompson that he had not eaten or drank something since Wednesday night, the division added.
He was discharged from the hospital and returned to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, the place he spoke along with his household and a religious adviser, the division stated.
When reached by CBS Information early Friday morning, Amanda Bass Castro Alves, an legal professional for Wooden, was unable to touch upon his medical situation.
“I am extraordinarily pleased with my staff at the moment,” ODOC Government Director Justin Farris stated in a press release. “It’s our statutory responsibility to hold out court-ordered sentences, and our employees all the time carry out their duties with excessive professionalism and with the utmost respect and compassion. Right this moment’s occasions spotlight the super job they do day in and day trip, particularly throughout high-profile occasions.”
Wooden had been sentenced to demise after being convicted, alongside along with his brother Zjaiton Wooden, within the 2001 homicide of Ronnie Wipf, a migrant farmworker from Montana, throughout a botched theft at an Oklahoma Metropolis lodge.
Zjaiton Wooden was sentenced to life in jail with out parole. He died in 2019.
Tremane Wooden and his attorneys, nevertheless, had all the time maintained that whereas he was concerned within the theft, he didn’t perform the slaying, arguing that the homicide was dedicated by Zjaiton Wooden alone.
Final week, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board beneficial clemency for Tremane Wooden.
“After a radical assessment of the details and prayerful consideration, I’ve chosen to just accept the Pardon and Parole Board’s suggestion to commute Tremane Wooden’s sentence to life with out parole,” Stitt stated in a press release Thursday morning. “This motion displays the identical punishment his brother obtained for his or her homicide of an harmless younger man and ensures a extreme punishment that retains a violent offender off the streets without end.”
This marked Stitt’s second clemency since taking workplace. Tremane Wooden can be the sixth condemned particular person to obtain clemency within the state within the fashionable historical past of capital punishment.
