OKLAHOMA CITY –
In 2002, Wood and his older brother Zjaiton robbed two men in an Oklahoma City motel. One victim escaped, and the other died of a stab wound. During Wood’s 2004 trial, Zjaiton took the stand and testified he committed the murder. But while he was given life in prison, the jury sentenced Wood to die.
Wood has fought to overturn this ruling ever since. His lawyer, Amanda Bass, outlined his lengthy legal battle in an interview with News 9.
“Tremaine has exhausted the state and federal review process at this point in time,” she said.
Accusations of lawyer’s misconduct
According to Bass, Wood and his team first argued the decision should be overturned on grounds of ineffective trial lawyer. Wood’s team claims that his original lawyer, John Albert, was struggling with cocaine and alcohol abuse, which may have contributed to ineffective representation. This strategy failed.
“The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals…held an evidentiary hearing back in 2006 on an issue related to his ineffective trial lawyer,” Bass explained. “It’s a difficult standard to meet…and it was a hard one for Tremaine to meet back in 2006, so he didn’t get relief there.”
After losing his appeal, Wood’s case moved to federal court. Bass and her team argued that the state’s ruling to uphold Wood’s death sentence was unreasonable. The federal court disagreed.
“After that process was exhausted,” Bass explained, “Tremaine was…out of court, meaning eligible for an execution date.”
Wood’s execution was then delayed by a 2015 moratorium on Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol. Bass explains this moratorium came into effect after the “botched” executions of death row inmates, Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner. This moratorium ended in 2022, when federal judge Stephen P. Friot denied inmates’ claims of Eighth Amendment violations.
With the moratorium lifted, Tremane was scheduled for execution.
On November 5th, 2025, Wood is set for a clemency hearing in front of Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board. This is Wood’s last chance to reduce his death sentence. But a new discovery has complicated the case even further.
Accusations of unauthorized miscommunication
Bass and her team say they found unauthorized email communications between Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond and the Presiding Judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals, Gary Lumpkin.
“They were discussing behind our backs,” Bass said, “how to postpone Tremaine’s date from what the state publicly requested to give the Attorney General’s office time to complete this investigation (and) use it in clemency proceedings.”
The state has argued Wood committed illegal activities while in prison. These accusations could affect his clemency hearing, but despite two discovery requests, Bass and her team say they have not received any evidence of these crimes.
“Email communications behind the backs of a litigant is unheard of,” Bass explained. “We also moved to sanction the Attorney General’s Office for this blatant litigation misconduct in a death penalty case. Both of those things were denied.”
News 9 reached out to the Office of the Attorney General for comment, but they were unwilling to discuss an ongoing case. However, according to a news release, Drummond formally requested the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board deny Wood clemency. Drummond cites Wood’s alleged criminal history in prison and a supposed lack of remorse as justifications to uphold the execution.
Now, Bass and her team are preparing to appeal to the United States Supreme Court. They mean to argue against the denial of prosecutorial misconduct claims against Wood’s former attorney and for the recusal of Judge Lumpkin for alleged unauthorized communication.
Their main obstacle? Time.
“We…have 90 days from early September to seek the Supreme Court’s review,” Bass said. “So that would give us until early December. Tremane’s execution date is two and a half weeks before then.”
With a fast-approaching deadline, Bass and her team are hard at work to provide Wood with the fair representation they say he deserves. Despite the obstacles, Wood remains optimistic.
“The weight of having an execution date is a profound and terrifying thing,” Bass said. “He knows his days are quite literally numbered…but he’s holding up. He hasn’t lost hope.”
Bass and her team have little time to prepare for a Supreme Court appeal and the November 5th clemency hearing. She hopes they can right what she feels is a miscarriage of justice.
“If we have evidence that the system preceding Tremane’s death sentence did not work,” Bass asks, “how can we be confident that a death sentence is actually the right outcome?”
As Bass develops a strategy for the upcoming clemency hearing, Tremane Wood sits on death row, set to be executed in less than a month, on November 13th, 2025.
Cole Deaver is a Griffin Media Contributor.
