Stephen Wood was executed by the State of Oklahoma for a prison murder
According to court documents Stephen Wood was serving a life sentence for two murders when he would murder Robert Brigden at the Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite. Robert Brigden was a former minister who was convicted of sexual assault against children
Stephen Wood would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Stephen Wood would be executed by lethal injection on August 5 1998
Stephen Wood Case
Stephen Edward Wood was executed by lethal injection early today for the 1994 prison slaying of a minister-turned-child molester.
Wood, 38, was pronounced dead at 12:21 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.
He made no final statement.
He joined the growing ranks of Oklahoma death row inmates who chose death over several years of appeals. Wood became the second Oklahoma inmate executed this year and the 11th since the state resumed the execution process in 1990.
All of those have been by lethal injection
He was executed for the 1994 prison slaying of the Rev. Robert Bruce Brigden, a former Presbyterian pastor from Alva who was serving time for molesting girls. At the time of Brigden’s slaying, Wood was serving a sentence of life without parole for killing two transients in 1992 in Lincoln County.
Like three other killers since 1995, Wood chose earlier this year to waive his remaining appeals. At his competency hearing in May, Wood told a judge he had long supported the death penalty
“Just because it’s me… my feelings haven’t changed. As a matter of fact, it’s strengthened them,” he told the judge.
Stephen Wood’s decision prompted two groups that oppose the death penalty to question why Oklahoma has such a disproportionate number of death row inmates who choose execution over appeals.
Nationally, 12 percent, or 60 of the 472 inmates who have been executed since the death penalty was resurrected in 1976, were volunteers. With Wood’s execution, Oklahoma’s figure rose to 36 percent.
Among states that have performed 10 to 20 executions in the modern era, South Carolina and Arizona have the next-highest percentage of volunteers with 27 and 25 percent, respectively.
Officials with Amnesty International and the Death Penalty Information Center believe the conditions on Oklahoma’s underground death row building, called H-Unit, play a significant role in the volunteerism.
Since 1994, Amnesty International has been criticizing H-Unit, calling it a violation of American and international standards.
The building’s “extreme conditions” include “tiny, concrete, windowless rooms with no natural light or fresh air ventilation,” said Kevin Acers, president of the group’s Oklahoma City chapter. He said the large number of condemned inmates should be “a yellow flag.”
“We are not asking for a country club for prisoners. We demand, however, better than a dungeon,” Acers said.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information in Washington, D.C., said he also thinks the building plays a factor, although he has not visited it.
Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson bristled.
“I don’t know what you could do to death row to make it so inviting that people would want to stay there longer. Prison is not meant to be attractive,” he said
For inmates who are locked in their cells 23 hours a day, choosing to die is one of the few things they can control. Edmondson said that could explain why some inmates waive their appeals.
However, he took issue with Amnesty International’s claim of a wide disparity in the appeal-waiver rate. Only four of the 145 inmates on Oklahoma’s death row have done so, he said.
“I don’t think that number is large enough to make any statistical conclusions yet,” he said.
Edmondson said changes in state and federal law could account for some inmates deciding to die early. He said increased restrictions on appeals make it more attractive for a prisoner to choose death sooner.
State corrections spokesman Jerry Massie said he couldn’t explain the statistical disparity, but said he doubts the conditions of H-Unit are much of a factor.
Father Don Brooks, who objects to the death penalty, offers another explanation. Brooks said inmates are packed in so tightly that they may decide to waive appeals because their fellow inmates are doing so
The number of Oklahoma inmates choosing that route troubles him, “partly for their sake, but partly for what it does to the justice system.”
Brooks, representing the Catholic Diocese of Tulsa, was outside the Oklahoma State Penitentiary keeping vigil Tuesday night with a small group of protesters.
Brooks said the appeals process is important to prevent innocent people from being executed.
Stephen Wood spent his final hours much as he had spent his six years in prison – quietly.
After spending part of Monday visiting his brother and sister-in-law, Wood saw a minister and his attorney Tuesday but declined TV and phone access.
He chose normal prison fare over a special last meal. Like others at the penitentiary, he was served a beef patty with onion gravy, mustard greens, buttered squash, mashed potatoes, bread and a fruit drink at 5 p.m
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/1998/08/05/state-executes-molesters-killer/62273444007/
