This story was produced in partnership with KOSU. 

Free after more than four decades in prison, former death row inmate Wayne Thompson returned to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to ask for a reduced sentence for his older brother, Tony Mann. 

Mann is serving life without parole for his role in the 1983 murder of Charles Keene. 

“I want y’all to know that that man is sitting in prison for something I did,” Thompson told the board. “I’ll trade places with him.” 

The board voted unanimously on Tuesday to recommend commuting Tony Mann’s sentence to life. If Gov. Kevin Stitt approves the recommendation, Mann would immediately be eligible for parole.

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Thompson was 15 when he killed Keene in Grady County in 1983. Keene had been married to Thompson and Mann’s sister. Family members say Keene had a history of violent and abusive behavior toward their sister, and the brothers wanted to protect their sister from further abuse. 

The night of the murder, Mann, who was 28, devised a plan with Thompson and two others to kidnap Keene, beat him and drop him off on a highway with orders not to return, according to court records. 

Mann drove the car, but Thompson testified in court that his older brother tried to talk him out of killing Keene. Mann tried to stop on the highway to let Keene out, but Thompson testified at trial that he pulled a gun on Mann and told him to keep driving. Thompson and another man weighed Keene’s body down with a heavy chain and cement block before dumping him in the Washita River, but Mann didn’t participate, Thompson said.   

His attorney told the board that Mann plans to live with one of his sisters in Chickasha if he is released, and he has a job lined up with a local roofing company. But work plans are now up in the air due to Mann’s poor health. Now 70 years old, Mann has a history of heart problems and was recently hospitalized for pneumonia. 

Mann is being held at the James Crabtree Correction Facility in the Northwest Oklahoma town of Helena. He appeared at the hearing via video call and declined to address the board. Family members remarked after the hearing that he looked thin and pale.

Tuesday’s hearing almost didn’t happen. 

The Pardon and Parole Board initially rejected Mann’s request for a commutation in October. Two board members later changed their votes to move Mann to the second stage of the process after Board Member Kevin Buchanan asked them to reconsider.

Mann’s attorney has argued that his sentence is excessive. He is the only person who remains in prison out of the four men who were originally sentenced to death for Keene’s murder. His sentence was eventually reduced to life without the possibility of parole after a second trial. 

One of the men convicted in Keene’s murder was stabbed to death weeks after arriving on death row in 1984. Another had his death sentence overturned and was acquitted after a second trial on testimony that he was drunk and passed out in the car during the killing. Thompson’s death sentence was eventually reduced to life with the possibility of parole, and he was released from prison in October. 

Buchanan told other members of the board on Tuesday that the fact that Mann was the only person still serving time was based on chance and not the facts of the crime. 

“This is a case, to me, that surprises me — the randomness that can cause such different results in a single case with multiple defendants,” he said.

A representative from the Grady County district attorney’s office on Monday again asked the Parole Board to reject clemency for Mann “due to the heinous nature of the crime.”

Assistant District Attorney Kellie Lewis told the board that Mann was complicit in Keene’s death, including helping to conceal his body after the murder. 

There are no limitations on how long the governor has to act on the board’s recommendation.

Thompson said he wants the governor to know that his brother didn’t kill Keene.  

“I hope he knows enough of the circumstances of the case to realize that Tony is not the one that committed the murder,” he said. “He was guilty of some stuff, but he was not guilty of the murder.”