Overview
- The board voted 3-2 to recommend sparing Wood, with Robert Reavis, Kevin Buchanan and Susan Stava in favor and Richard Miller and Sean Malloy opposed.
- The majority pointed to concerns about ineffective trial counsel and to defense claims that Wood’s brother was the stabber in the 2001 motel robbery that killed 19-year-old Ronnie Wipf.
- Attorney General Gentner Drummond opposed clemency, citing evidence of Wood’s culpability and alleged prison misconduct including gang activity, contraband phones and orchestrating attacks.
- Wood acknowledged his role in the robbery and past prison violations, denied being the killer and expressed remorse for Wipf during his video testimony.
- Stitt has rarely granted clemency in capital cases, commuting Julius Jones’s sentence in 2021 while rejecting other recommendations, and his office will receive the AG’s case against commutation.