Oklahoma executes a man for a 1992 killing despite board recommending his life be spared

This booking photo provided by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections shows Emmanuel Littlejohn, Feb. 8, 2023. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections via AP, File)

McALESTER, Okla. -

Oklahoma executed a man Thursday for his role in the 1992 shooting death of a convenience store owner after the governor rejected a recommendation from the state's parole board to spare his life.

Emmanuel Littlejohn, 52, received a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and was declared dead at 10:17 a.m.

"A jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death," Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a statement explaining why he declined to commute Littlejohn's sentence to life in prison without parole. "As a law and order governor, I have a hard time unilaterally overturning that decision."

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Stitt has granted clemency only once out of the five times that the parole board has recommended it during Stitt's nearly six years in office. Oklahoma has carried out 14 executions under Stitt, having resumed them in 2021 after a more than six-year hiatus.

In voting 3-2 last month to recommend clemency, the board appeared to be moved by questions Littlejohn's lawyers raised about whether he or a co-defendant fired the shot that killed Kenneth Meers. Littlejohn's attorneys also suggested the jury was unclear about whether a sentence of life without parole would guarantee someone would never be released.

His lethal injection came just two days after the execution of Marcellus Williams in Missouri, where advocates insisted Williams was innocent.

Strapped to a gurney and with an IV line in his right arm, Littlejohn looked toward his mother and daughter, who witnessed the execution.

"Mom, you OK?" Littlejohn asked.

"I'm OK," his mother, Ceily Mason, responded.

"Everything is going to be OK. I love you," he said.

Mason sobbed quietly and clutched a cross necklace during the lethal injection, which began shortly after 10 a.m. Littlejohn's breathing became labored before a doctor declared him unconscious at 10:07 a.m. He was pronounced dead 10 minutes later.

Littlejohn's spiritual advisor, the Rev. Jeff Hood, was inside the death chamber and prayed over him.

Steven Harpe, the director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, said the lethal injection went without any problems.

If an execution set for Thursday evening in Alabama is carried out, it would mark the first time in decades that five death row inmates were put to death in the U.S. within one week. The five executions would also mark another grim milestone -- 1,600 executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Littlejohn was 20 when prosecutors say he and co-defendant Glenn Bethany robbed the Root-N-Scoot convenience store in south Oklahoma City in June 1992.

During video testimony to the Pardon and Parole Board in early August, Littlejohn apologized to Meers' family but denied firing the fatal shot. Littlejohn's attorneys pointed out that the same prosecutor tried Bethany and Littlejohn in separate trials using a nearly identical theory, even though there was only one shooter and one bullet that killed Meers, 31.

But prosecutors told the board that two teenage store employees who witnessed the robbery both said Littlejohn, not Bethany, fired the fatal shot. Bethany was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Littlejohn's attorneys also argued that killings resulting from a robbery are rarely considered death penalty cases and that prosecutors today would not have pursued the ultimate punishment.

"It is evident that Emmanuel would not have been sentenced to death if he'd been tried in 2024 or even 2004," attorney Caitlin Hoeberlein told the board.

Littlejohn was prosecuted by former Oklahoma County District Attorney Bob Macy, who was known for his zealous pursuit of the death penalty and secured 54 death sentences during more than 20 years in office.

Stitt previously asked one of his appointees to the parole board, Adam Luck, to step down after Luck voted several times to recommend clemency.

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The only time Stitt has granted clemency was in 2021, when he commuted Julius Jones' death sentence to life without parole just hours before Jones was scheduled to receive a lethal injection. Stitt has denied clemency recommendations from the board in three other cases: Bigler Stouffer, James Coddington and Phillip Hancock, all of whom were executed.

A state appellate court on Wednesday denied a last-minute legal challenge from Littlejohn's attorneys to the constitutionality of the state's lethal injection method of execution. A similar appeal filed in federal court also was rejected Thursday.