Tremane Wood was scheduled to die at 10 a.m. local time on November 13. According to journalist Hilary Andersson, who traveled to Oklahoma to observe the execution, the call from the governor came at 9:59 a.m. Mr. Wood learned that his life would be spared at the literal “last minute.”
While Mr. Wood, his attorneys, and his family experienced overwhelming relief in the aftermath of the clemency grant, according to Ms. Andersson, some also expressed shock at the timing of the decision. Mr. Wood’s son Brendan, an active-duty Army soldier, had driven 18 hours from Fort Bragg to say goodbye to his father.
"Robert Waterhouse was scheduled for execution at 6:00 pm this evening.
While Mr. Wood, his attorneys, and his family experienced overwhelming relief in the aftermath of the clemency grant, according to Ms. Andersson, some also expressed shock at the timing of the decision. Mr. Wood’s son Brendan, an active-duty Army soldier, had driven 18 hours from Fort Bragg to say goodbye to his father.
Brendan sat “bolt upright, his voice cracking and tears streaming down his face,” Ms. Andersson wrote. “I think there needs to be possibly some precaution in place, maybe even a bill that prevents last-second decisions like this,” Brendan told her. “I believe that a person wholeheartedly thinking that they are about to take their last breath, and it coming down to seconds, minutes before the decision is made…I think it is cruel and inhumane, mental torture because at that point they are trying to find their peace and find a place where they aren’t going to go out in anguish.”
Federal law, U.S. military policy, and international human rights law all ban “mock” or “sham” executions, classifying them as a form of torture. In a mock execution, officials prepare for or simulate a killing, such as firing a weapon next to an individual’s head or bringing them to an execution chamber, in order to make the individual believe they are about to die. Legal scholar John Bessler has argued that aspects of the American death penalty system amount to torturous mock executions because a capital prisoner is repeatedly given an “awareness of [his] impending death and a helplessness to prevent it.” “To date, the Supreme Court has been narrowly focused on whether executions carry a risk of excruciating physical pain at the very moment of an inmate’s death,” Professor Bessler wrote in a 2018 law review article. “That narrow focus, however, totally ignores the severe psychological torment associated with confinement on death row and that associated with death sentences and executions.”
Observers have noted parallels between mock executions and stays of execution. After preparing to face his own death, a prisoner may experience not only immense relief, but serious psychological distress when the execution does not proceed. This distress may be greater the closer the prisoner came to death. Stays have been granted when prisoners were already in the execution chamber and had needles inserted in their arms.
Richard Glossip ate a “last meal” on three different occasions; he did so twice in the same month, September 2015, only for Oklahoma to halt his execution both times due to a lack of proper lethal injection drugs. His attorney Don Knight told NPR at the time that “repeatedly pulling his client back from the cusp of death at the last minute is cruel and unusual punishment.” “When you see torture, is it torture? It looks like torture,” Mr. Knight commented. The Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Mr. Glossip on February 25 this year based on prosecutorial misconduct.
The Court also ruled in favor of Ruben Gutierrez this year on a procedural question related to his quest for DNA testing, after granting a stay of execution last summer just 20 minutes before he was scheduled to die. Mr. Gutierrez was about to be led to Texas’ execution chamber when he heard the news. “He was visibly emotional,” said prison spokeswoman Amanda Hernandez. “He turned around to the back of the cell, covered his mouth. He was tearing up, speechless. He was shocked.” Like Mr. Glossip, this was not Mr. Gutierrez’s first time preparing for death: the Supreme Court had earlier granted him a stay an hour before he was scheduled to die in 2020.
Likewise, the Equal Justice Initiative has suggested that a botched execution may amount to torture when a prisoner survives, not only because of potential physical pain, but because of the psychological similarities to a mock execution. “Most people can’t possibly imagine the agony of being credibly told that on this date, at this hour you will be killed, only to go through the process of an execution and be physically abused before being sent back to your cell,” said EJI Executive Director Bryan Stevenson. In 2022, Kenneth Smith laid on a gurney for hours while Alabama officials stabbed him with needles in an attempt to find a vein. After the failed attempt, he was diagnosed with PTSD, vomited frequently, and stopped sleeping due to nightmares of being taken back to the death chamber. Mr. Smith argued that a second execution attempt would be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual, but Alabama executed him by nitrogen gas in 2024.
Mr. Wood’s clemency grant appears to be one of the “latest” in recent memory, possibly in the entire modern era of the death penalty. Others receiving clemency shortly before their scheduled executions include Julius Jones (four hours, Oklahoma, 2021), Jimmy Meders (six hours, Georgia, 2020), and Thomas “Bart” Whitaker (less than one hour, Texas, 2018). Mr. Wood “had mentally worked himself up to face the end, to go in there and be strapped to the table and executed,” said his lawyer Amanda Bass Castro Alves. When told he got clemency, “he just collapsed on to the floor, just literally collapsed. The pressure that he was under being lifted just took everything out of him.”
Just a few hours after learning his life was spared, Mr. Wood was found “unresponsive” in his new cell. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors determined he was suffering from “dehydration and stress.” Mr. Wood said that he wasn’t sure what happened, but he believed he had fallen off his bunk and lost consciousness after not having anything to eat or drink since his “last meal” the night before.
Given the troubling circumstances of Mr. Wood’s case, the grant of clemency by Governor Kevin Stitt, despite the last-minute timing, was a decision that many call “courageous and correct.” Clemency has long been called the “fail-safe” of the death penalty system, and recent polls show that clemency is increasingly politically popular.
Federal law, U.S. military policy, and international human rights law all ban “mock” or “sham” executions, classifying them as a form of torture. In a mock execution, officials prepare for or simulate a killing, such as firing a weapon next to an individual’s head or bringing them to an execution chamber, in order to make the individual believe they are about to die. Legal scholar John Bessler has argued that aspects of the American death penalty system amount to torturous mock executions because a capital prisoner is repeatedly given an “awareness of [his] impending death and a helplessness to prevent it.” “To date, the Supreme Court has been narrowly focused on whether executions carry a risk of excruciating physical pain at the very moment of an inmate’s death,” Professor Bessler wrote in a 2018 law review article. “That narrow focus, however, totally ignores the severe psychological torment associated with confinement on death row and that associated with death sentences and executions.”
A mock execution may not actually inflict any observable physical harm, though someone who goes through a sham execution obviously experiences extreme psychological terror during and after the ordeal. Just as the victim of a mock execution is tortured (and is considered a torture victim) despite the lack of any observable physical indicators that torture has occurred, a person capitally charged and sentenced to death suffers severe psychological torment even if an execution is physically painless or averted altogether through an appeal or executive clemency.
Observers have noted parallels between mock executions and stays of execution. After preparing to face his own death, a prisoner may experience not only immense relief, but serious psychological distress when the execution does not proceed. This distress may be greater the closer the prisoner came to death. Stays have been granted when prisoners were already in the execution chamber and had needles inserted in their arms.
Richard Glossip ate a “last meal” on three different occasions; he did so twice in the same month, September 2015, only for Oklahoma to halt his execution both times due to a lack of proper lethal injection drugs. His attorney Don Knight told NPR at the time that “repeatedly pulling his client back from the cusp of death at the last minute is cruel and unusual punishment.” “When you see torture, is it torture? It looks like torture,” Mr. Knight commented. The Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Mr. Glossip on February 25 this year based on prosecutorial misconduct.
The Court also ruled in favor of Ruben Gutierrez this year on a procedural question related to his quest for DNA testing, after granting a stay of execution last summer just 20 minutes before he was scheduled to die. Mr. Gutierrez was about to be led to Texas’ execution chamber when he heard the news. “He was visibly emotional,” said prison spokeswoman Amanda Hernandez. “He turned around to the back of the cell, covered his mouth. He was tearing up, speechless. He was shocked.” Like Mr. Glossip, this was not Mr. Gutierrez’s first time preparing for death: the Supreme Court had earlier granted him a stay an hour before he was scheduled to die in 2020.
Likewise, the Equal Justice Initiative has suggested that a botched execution may amount to torture when a prisoner survives, not only because of potential physical pain, but because of the psychological similarities to a mock execution. “Most people can’t possibly imagine the agony of being credibly told that on this date, at this hour you will be killed, only to go through the process of an execution and be physically abused before being sent back to your cell,” said EJI Executive Director Bryan Stevenson. In 2022, Kenneth Smith laid on a gurney for hours while Alabama officials stabbed him with needles in an attempt to find a vein. After the failed attempt, he was diagnosed with PTSD, vomited frequently, and stopped sleeping due to nightmares of being taken back to the death chamber. Mr. Smith argued that a second execution attempt would be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual, but Alabama executed him by nitrogen gas in 2024.
Mr. Wood’s clemency grant appears to be one of the “latest” in recent memory, possibly in the entire modern era of the death penalty. Others receiving clemency shortly before their scheduled executions include Julius Jones (four hours, Oklahoma, 2021), Jimmy Meders (six hours, Georgia, 2020), and Thomas “Bart” Whitaker (less than one hour, Texas, 2018). Mr. Wood “had mentally worked himself up to face the end, to go in there and be strapped to the table and executed,” said his lawyer Amanda Bass Castro Alves. When told he got clemency, “he just collapsed on to the floor, just literally collapsed. The pressure that he was under being lifted just took everything out of him.”
Just a few hours after learning his life was spared, Mr. Wood was found “unresponsive” in his new cell. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors determined he was suffering from “dehydration and stress.” Mr. Wood said that he wasn’t sure what happened, but he believed he had fallen off his bunk and lost consciousness after not having anything to eat or drink since his “last meal” the night before.
Given the troubling circumstances of Mr. Wood’s case, the grant of clemency by Governor Kevin Stitt, despite the last-minute timing, was a decision that many call “courageous and correct.” Clemency has long been called the “fail-safe” of the death penalty system, and recent polls show that clemency is increasingly politically popular.
Death Penalty News Addendum:
The following piece is excerpted from Death Row Diary, by William Van Poyck. Mr. Van Poyck -- who always maintained his innocence -- was executed for murder by the state of Florida on June 12, 2013. The text below is one of the dispatches he wrote during the last two years prior to his own execution. Mr. Van Poyck's letters were posted online with the help of his sister.
"The phone on the wall rings and you're told it's time to die."
"In accordance with the established execution protocol he was strapped to the gurney and the needles were inserted into each arm about 45 minutes prior to his appointed time.
"Just before 6:00, however, he received a 45-minute stay which morphed into an almost 3-hour endurance test as he remained on the gurney as the seconds, minutes and then hours slid by at an excruciatingly slow pace, waiting for someone to tell him if hope was at hand, if he would live or die.
"Just before 9:00 he received his answer, the plungers were depressed, the syringes emptied and he was summarily killed. Here on the row we can discern the approximate time of death when we see the old white Cadillac hearse trundle in through the back sally port gate to pick up the body, the same familiar 1960's era hearse I've watched for almost 40 years, coming in to retrieve the bodies of murdered prisoners, which used to happen on a regular basis back when I was in open population. I've seen a lot of guys, both friends and foes, carted off in that old hearse.
"Anyway, pause for a moment to imagine being on that gurney for over three hours, the needles in your arms. You've already come to terms with your imminent death, you are reconciled with the reality that this is it, this is how you will die, that there will be no reprieve.
"Then, at the last moment, a cruel trick, you're given that slim hope, which you instinctively grasp. Some court, somewhere, has given you a temporary stay.
"You stare at the ceiling while the clock on the wall ticks away. You are totally alone, not a friendly soul in sight, surrounded by grim-faced men who are determined to kill you. Your heart pounds, your body feels electrified and every second seems like an eternity as a kaleidoscope of wild thoughts crash around frantically in your compressed mind. After 3 hours you are drained, exhausted, terrorized, and then the phone on the wall rings and you're told it's time to die."
(Source: Death Row Diary, William Van Poyck, February 15, 2012)
(Source: Death Row Diary, William Van Poyck, February 15, 2012)
NB: The original title of the Death Penalty Information Center article is "Spared at the “Last Minute”: A Form of Psychological Torture?"
Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Leah Roemer, November 20, 2025
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde