An Oklahoma loss of life row inmate was hospitalized Thursday after being discovered unresponsive in his cell, officers mentioned, 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 together with his attorneys for “a number of hours,” in keeping with a press release from the Oklahoma Division of Corrections. The company mentioned it then moved him off loss of life 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 mentioned, and jail workers 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 docs discovered that his “medical occasion” was attributable to “dehydration and stress,” the division mentioned.
Following the incident, Wooden additionally took half in a cellphone name with ODOC spokesperson Kay Thompson, the division mentioned, through which he advised her that he could not “actually clarify what occurred.”
He allegedly advised Thompson that he had laid all the way down to sleep and “will need to have rolled off his bunk,” disclosing that the subsequent factor he remembered was waking “up within the infirmary” with “[his] head busted and [his] lip busted,” in keeping with 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 mentioned in its information launch.
Within the cellphone 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 together with his household and a religious adviser, the division mentioned.
When reached by CBS Information early Friday morning, Amanda Bass Castro Alves, an lawyer for Wooden, was unable to touch upon his medical situation.
“I am extraordinarily happy with my group at the moment,” ODOC Govt Director Justin Farris mentioned in a press release. “It’s our statutory responsibility to hold out court-ordered sentences, and our workers at all times carry out their duties with excessive professionalism and with the utmost respect and compassion. At present’s occasions spotlight the super job they do day in and time out, particularly throughout high-profile occasions.”
Wooden had been sentenced to loss of life after being convicted, alongside together 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, nonetheless, had at all times 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 really helpful clemency for Tremane Wooden.
“After an intensive evaluation of the info and prayerful consideration, I’ve chosen to simply accept the Pardon and Parole Board’s advice to commute Tremane Wooden’s sentence to life with out parole,” Stitt mentioned in a press release Thursday morning. “This motion displays the identical punishment his brother acquired for his or her homicide of an harmless younger man and ensures a extreme punishment that retains a violent offender off the streets eternally.”
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.
