Oklahoma Prisoner Found Unconscious in Cell Hours After Avoiding Execution
On November 13, 2025, just moments before Tremane Wood, 46, was scheduled to be killed via lethal injection, Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican and staunch supporter of the death penalty, spared the prisoner’s life by reducing his sentence to life without parole. Hours later, Wood was found unresponsive in his cell. As CBS reported, Wood was then taken to the hospital due to a “medical event that resulted in injuries.”
Doctors attributed his condition to “dehydration and stress,” and Wood—who confirmed there was no one else in his cell during the incident—told state DOC officials that he went to sleep and rolled off his bunk. Wood’s next memory was waking up in the prison infirmary with his head and lip busted.
Wood had received the death sentence after being convicted, along with his brother Zjaiton Wood, of a 2001 murder. Zjaiton Wood was sentenced to life without parole and died by suicide in 2019. According to Wood’s lawyer, Amanda Bass Castro-Alves, the discrepancy in the brother’s sentences can be traced to lackluster legal representation. Castro-Alves said on a podcast in 2024 that Wood’s previous public defender admitted “he didn’t do much at all to represent Tremane,” and her legal team found invoices showing the lawyer only worked 80 hours on Wood’s defense.
Gov. Stitt’s intervention came after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request from Castro-Alves to stay his execution earlier that week. Stitt acted, instead, following the recommendation of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, which voted 3 to 2 in favor of the reduced sentence. In total, seventeen prisoners have been executed in Oklahoma since Stitt took office in 2019, with two killings occurring this year, including that of John Hanson, 61, whose lethal injection was expedited by the Trump administration. [See: PLN, Aug. 2025, p. 15.]
Wood’s clemency marks only the second time that Stitt has stayed an execution. Stitt, however, has directly pushed for four executions in separate cases that were recommended for clemency by the Oklahoma’s parole board.
Additional sources: The New York Times; Associated Press; the Death Penalty Information Center
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