Oklahoma is poised to execute a man on Thursday while awaiting Republican Governor Kevin Stitt’s decision on whether to grant clemency, following an unusual recommendation for mercy from the state’s parole board.
Emmanuel Littlejohn, 52, is scheduled to die by lethal injection for his role in the 1992 fatal shooting of a convenience store owner during a robbery.
In his six years as governor, Stitt has only granted clemency once and has rejected recommendations from the state’s Pardon and Parole Board in three other cases. A spokeswoman for Stitt said on Wednesday that the governor had met with prosecutors and Littlejohn’s attorneys but had not made a decision.
The execution is set for 10 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Littlejohn would be the 14th person executed in Oklahoma under Stitt’s administration.
Another execution is scheduled later Thursday in Alabama, and if both proceed, it would be the first time in decades that five death row inmates have been put to death in the U.S. within a single week.
In Oklahoma, an appellate court on Wednesday rejected a last-minute legal challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s lethal injection method of execution.
Littlejohn would be the third Oklahoma inmate to be put to death this year. He 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. The store’s owner, Kenneth Meers, 31, was killed.
During video testimony to the Pardon and Parole Board last month, 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.
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.
The board’s 3-2 recommendation gave Stitt the option of commuting Littlejohn’s sentence to life in prison without parole. The governor has appointed three of the board’s members.
In 2021, Stitt granted clemency to Julius Jones, commuting his sentence to life without parole just hours before Jones was scheduled to receive a lethal injection. He denied clemency recommendations from the board for Bigler Stouffer, James Coddington and Phillip Hancock, all of whom were executed.
The executions in Oklahoma and Alabama would make for 1,600 executions nationwide since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
