16-04-2025
We're not following the death penalty process we all voted for
We here in the state of Oklahoma have an excellent judicial system, but regrettably, when it comes to the death penalty — the most terminal of all punishments — we don't always get it right.
Take the case of Tremane Wood. He will be scheduled for execution sometime this calendar year, but he never murdered anyone. A plea agreement traded Tremane's older brother — the admitted killer who had a skilled defense team — for Tremane, who was only at the crime scene because of his brother's influence and was represented at trial by an overworked attorney with substance abuse problems.
It highlights one of the many problems with our system here in Oklahoma. It really doesn't take much to end up on death row.
More: Oklahoma has done nothing to reverse course on wrongful criminal convictions | Opinion
And that fact collides head-on with the constitutional amendment that I and other Oklahomans voted for in 2016 to formally protect the death penalty in the state Constitution. Like most people, I thought capital punishment would be reserved only for people who are guilty of actually killing someone and that we would be 100% sure that we have the right person.
But we keep discovering otherwise.
Tremane Wood's case follows that of Richard Glossip for whom the U.S. Supreme Court just ordered a new trial due to allegations the state withheld evidence.
How many other cases of wrongfully convicted men and women could there be that we don't know about?
This is why I sponsored Senate Bill 601, the Death Penalty Moratorium Act, which will pause the executions of judgments in all death penalty cases for 24 months, as called for in the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission report of 2017. Virtually none of the commission's 45 recommended reforms were implemented, which has helped lead us to where we are today.
Everyone involved in the death penalty process — the defendant, the state and the families of the victims — must be sure of the accuracy of the conviction or there is no justice for any of them. This is the most serious punishment we have as a society, and we have to be 100% accurate.
I became involved in this issue when I started looking at our overall judicial system. I learned we do not pay our district attorney offices enough, we don't have nearly enough public defenders, we don't have enough troopers, enough county sheriffs and deputies, and then if you come into the judicial system and you don't have the right lawyer, or that lawyer doesn't understand your case, you're behind the eight ball.
We also need to remember that juries only weigh the evidence. They don't go out and gather the evidence. They don't know if the evidence has been tampered with, they don't know if it has been made up, if it's accurate. Sadly, my research has found many individuals have been exonerated, and many times because the evidence was not accurate.
The cases of Tremane Wood and Richard Glossip show us that a moratorium is necessary, and I think we need to ask ourselves, "If we aren't absolutely sure, is this really what we want to do? Does the victim really have rest in this? Will this console the victim's family?" I don't think so.
In the Tremane Woods case, there will be no closure for anyone because everyone knows he didn't do it. And that is just one category of concern we need to check out. Again, virtually none of the significant death penalty reforms called for in the 2017 report were ever implemented, so let's just take a pause.
We already know 11 people have been freed from death row and exonerated here in Oklahoma. People like Glynn Simmons, the longest-incarcerated innocent person in American history at 48 years, including two years on death row. The city of Edmond agreed to pay more than $7 million in the case.
Can the residents of Oklahoma accept a system that terminates life without being absolutely sure about the accuracy and waste millions of dollars to find out they did it wrong? I believe the residents will say, "No, that's not the system I voted for in 2016." Polling in 2023 showed 77% of Oklahomans support a halt to executions to make sure the process is accurate and fair.
Oklahomans want justice; it's why we voted to protect the death penalty in the state Constitution, but we simply can't keep getting it wrong.
I want to echo the principle Benjamin Franklin famously articulated for the basis of American jurisprudence. 'That it is better 100 guilty persons should escape, than that one innocent person should suffer." We may have the greatest judicial system ever known, but Oklahoma residents demand that we do it right. There is no room for error when life is on the line.
Dave Rader, a state senator from Tulsa, is a lifelong Republican, professional engineer by training, and was the head football coach at the University of Tulsa from 1988 to 1999. He has been a member of the Oklahoma state Senate since 2017.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: We have put too many wrongfully convicted people on death row | Opinion
