‘A sick spectacle’: counting down the final minutes on Oklahoma’s death row

Tremane Wood was prepared to die by lethal injection. A minute before he was to be put to death, a call came in

• After a controversial trial, an Oklahoma man makes a final plea to avoid execution

The signature at the bottom of the email about witnessing an execution said cheerfully: Oklahoma Corrections. We Change Lives!"

I had received the email three weeks earlier. It explained that I was being invited to participate in a lottery, from which five media representatives would be selected to witness the execution of Tremane Wood in the Oklahoma state penitentiary on 13 November. I had never heard of Wood, who had been convicted of the murder of Ronnie Wipf, 19, in 2002.