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Oklahoma board recommends clemency for inmate set to be executed next week

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Emily Mae Czachor
News Editor
Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She typically covers breaking news, extreme weather and issues involving social justice. Emily Mae previously wrote for outlets like the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.
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Emily Mae Czachor

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A voting board in Oklahoma decided Wednesday to recommend clemency for Tremane Wood, a death row inmate who is scheduled to receive a lethal injection next week at the state penitentiary in McAlester. 

Wood, 46, faces execution for his conviction in the 2001 murder of Ronnie Wipf, a migrant farmworker, at an Oklahoma City hotel on New Year's Eve, court records show.

The recommendation was decided in a 3-2 vote by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, consisting of five members appointed by either the governor or the state's top judicial official, according to CBS News affiliate . Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Sitt will consider the recommendation as he weighs whether to grant or deny Wood's clemency request, which would mean sparing him from execution and reducing his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Sitt has to one other death row inmate in his nearly seven years of service as governor. That inmate, Julius Jones, received a commutation to life in prison without the possibility of parole on the day his execution was supposed to take place in 2021. The governor's decision came as Jones' case sparked huge public outcry and people questioned the legitimacy of his guilt in the murder case that led to his death sentence.

Earlier, both Jones and Wood were part of the same 2017 lawsuit that alleged Oklahoma's application of capital punishment was racist and unconstitutionally biased, and sought to overturn their death sentences, to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that provides data and analyses about capital punishment but does not take a position on it. 

In Wood's case, the inmate and his attorneys have repeatedly maintained his innocence in Wipf's murder and suggested that Wood's brother, Zjaiton Wood, was responsible for the killing while Wood only participated in the botched robbery that ultimately turned deadly. 

Wood's brother received a lifetime prison sentence and died while incarcerated in 2019, reported. Before his death, Zjaiton Wood allegedly told multiple people that he was the one who committed the murder, said Tremane Wood's attorney, Amanda Bass Castro Alves, according to the AP.

Although Wood's attorneys argued that he did not receive fair or adequate legal representation at his original trial or subsequent appeals, and claimed some elements of how the prosecution handled his case violated the inmate's constitutional rights, the state of Oklahoma has over the last two decades insisted that Wood is a dangerous criminal who continued to be involved with drugs and gangs behind bars. Wood has admitted to such conduct during his incarceration but continues to insist he did not have a part in Wipf's death.

"I'm not a monster. I'm not a killer. I never was and I never have been," Wood said in video testimony shown during a recent hearing with the Pardon and Parole Board, AP reported. "Not a day goes by in my life that I do not think about Ronnie and how much his mom and dad are suffering because they don't have their son any more."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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