Three Executions in Three Days Despite Calls to Abolish the Death Penalty in the US
Tremane Wood, Bryan Jennings and Stephen Bryant are scheduled to be murdered by the government this week. Advocates are petitioning to stop the executions.
To be executed under the death penalty is to be murdered by the government. No one should experience it, yet there are two people scheduled to be executed tomorrow, Nov. 13, and another on Friday, Nov. 14. Within two days, three people will be executed despite 70% of the world having banned the death penalty.
Their names are Tremane Wood, Bryan Jennings and Stephen Bryant.
Wood, who is African American, was convicted by an all-white jury when he was 22 years old for a murder that his older brother admitted to committing.
Since Wood was involved in the robbery during which the murder took place, he was convicted under felony murder, meaning he was present but did not actually commit the murder. Although the court recognized he did not kill anyone, he was sentenced to death while his brother was sentenced to life without parole. Wood’s current legal team said that this disparity is due to issues with his previous trial attorney, who suffered from substance abuse and only spent two hours on his case during a 19-month period.
The victim’s family opposes Wood’s execution, saying that killing Wood is not justice. During his time incarcerated, Wood has mentored others, including youth in his family and young men entering prison, earned his G.E.D. and has participated in the prison’s group recreation pilot program.
Earlier this month, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted to recommend clemency for Wood, but Governor Kevin Stitt has the final say. Advocates are urging him to grant Wood clemency.
Oklahoma has a terrible track record with the death penalty. One of the largest recent anti-death penalty campaigns centered around Julius Jones, an innocent man who faced execution in 2021 but had his sentence commuted to life without parole the same day following nationwide pressure on Governor Stitt to halt the execution. Another large recent campaign regarded the case of Emmanuel A. Littlejohn, who was executed during September last year despite calls from the state’s parole board calling on Stitt to spare his life.
Since Stitt resumed the death penalty in Oklahoma in 2021, the state has executed 17 people. Stitt has only granted clemency once, to Julius Jones.
However, advocates are hoping that Stitt will once again grant clemency, this time to Wood, who has been on death row for 21 years.
On a website dedicated to the commutation of Wood’s sentence, Wood noted:
“It takes courage for the decision makers in my case to stand up, to fight this broken system, and to stand with us.”
Advocates are urging people to call Stitt at 405-521-2342 and urge him to grant Wood clemency, and to sign a petition administered by Death Penalty Action.
Also tomorrow — the same week as Veteran’s Day — Bryan Jennings, a 66-year old Marine Corps Veteran, is scheduled to be the 16th person executed in Florida this year. This would be the seventh time a US veteran was executed under Governor Ron DeSantis, and the fifth veteran executed in the state this year. DeSantis signed Jennings’ death warrant last Friday.
In an op-ed with the Floridians Against the Death Penalty, Ryan Sanshuck, a U.S. Army combat veteran and a Purple Heart recipient, called the execution of a US veteran a “final act of betrayal.” A third of veterans with mental disorders do not receive treatment, even though veterans are twice as likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder than the average person. Veterans are twice as likely than the average person to become incarcerated.
FADP also said that “Jennings was left without a state-appointed lawyer for more than three years, in direct violation of Florida law. He has not received a clemency hearing in more than 35 years.” Jennings has been on death row for more than 45 years, and advocates say he is not the same person as when he went into prison.
They are collecting signatures in a petition for Jennings, which they plan to deliver to DeSantis Thursday evening.
In the op-ed, Sanshuck continued:
“Governor DeSantis can stop these executions at any time, for any reason. Instead, he has signed warrant after warrant, with no regard for the circumstances that may have contributed to them ending up on death row while calling Florida ‘the most veteran-friendly state in the nation.’ But a veteran-friendly state does not execute veterans. A leader who claims to honor service should not take the lives of those who bore the cost of it.”
The third execution scheduled this week is for Stephen Bryant, 44, who is facing execution in South Carolina by a firing squad. Bryant was sentenced to death for killing three people over the course of five days, but his appellate lawyers said that the judge who sentenced him to die never considered his brain damage from his mother’s alcohol and drug use while pregnant.
Bryant would be the second execution by a firing squad in South Carolina since it was reintroduced in the US in March for the first time in 15 years. The firing squad execution method is a Civil War era punishment — 185 people died from a firing squad during that time.
At a point where 70% of the world has abolished the death penalty, the US should be working to end it too, not add new execution methods.
While anti-death penalty advocates argue no method of execution should be allowed, some have noted that the firing squad have missed its targets leading to suffering in the moments leading up to the executed person’s death. Some have raised the question whether the firing squad misses because they feel guilty, or if it is because they want to worsen the suffering of the person facing execution.
In a press release, Abe Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action, said:
“Either the firing squad members are purposely wanting to extend the suffering of the prisoner, or perhaps more likely, none of them want such a killing on their conscience. Whatever the motivation is for not hitting a correctly placed target, just the fact that this has happened should give us pause.”
Advocates with Death Penalty Action are asking people to call South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster at 803-734-2100 to urge clemency for Bryant and sign a petition they made and plan to deliver to McMaster.
All men have demonstrated that they are different people from when they first went into prison. Regardless, no one should die at the hands of the government. More people oppose than support the death penalty, it is becoming less popular among public opinion. The death penalty perpetuates a cycle of violence. The fact that the US is one of the top executioners in the world while claiming to be “the land of the free” should demonstrate the hypocrisy in this country and underscore the changes that need to be made.