Authorities within the US state of Oklahoma have executed a person regardless of a parole board recommending that Emmanuel Littlejohn’s life be spared.
Littlejohn, 52, was executed by deadly injection Thursday morning for the deadly 1992 theft of a retailer proprietor. Studies stated that as he lay strapped to the gurney with an IV in his proper arm, he appeared towards his mom and daughter who had been watching.
“Every part goes to be high-quality. “I like you,” Littlejohn stated.
The execution on the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, 130 miles (210 kilometers) east of Oklahoma Metropolis, was the fourth in the US in lower than every week and comes hours earlier than the state of Alabama makes use of gasoline nitrogen to execute Alan Eugene. Miller on Thursday evening.
If the execution in Alabama goes forward, it will be the primary time in many years that 5 demise row inmates have been executed in the US in a single week, based on the Dying Penalty Info Middle.
The 5 executions would additionally mark one other grim milestone: 1,600 executions for the reason that U.S. Supreme Courtroom reinstated the demise penalty in 1976.
Littlejohn was 20 when prosecutors say he and co-defendant Glenn Bethany robbed the Root-N-Scoot retailer in south Oklahoma Metropolis in June 1992.
Throughout video testimony earlier than the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Paroles in early August, Littlejohn apologized to the household of Kenneth Meers, the comfort retailer proprietor who died in the course of the theft, however denied firing the deadly shot. .
Littlejohn’s attorneys famous that the identical prosecutor tried Bethany and Littlejohn in separate trials utilizing an almost similar principle, regardless that there was just one shooter and a bullet killed Meers, 31.
However prosecutors instructed the board that two teenage retailer workers who witnessed the theft stated Littlejohn, not Bethany, fired the deadly shot. Bethany was sentenced to life in jail with out parole.
Littlejohn’s attorneys additionally argued that murders ensuing from theft are hardly ever thought-about demise penalty instances and that prosecutors right now wouldn’t have utilized the utmost penalty.
“It’s evident that Emmanuel wouldn’t have been sentenced to demise if he had been tried in 2024 and even 2004,” lawyer Caitlin Hoeberlein instructed the board.
Battles for clemency
Littlejohn was prosecuted by former Oklahoma County District Lawyer Robert Macy, who was identified for his enthusiastic pursuit of the demise penalty and obtained 54 demise sentences throughout greater than 20 years in workplace.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, beforehand requested certainly one of his parole board appointees, Adam Luck, to resign after Luck voted a number of occasions to suggest clemency.
The one time Stitt granted clemency was in 2021, when he commuted Julius Jones’ demise sentence to life in jail with out parole simply hours earlier than Jones acquired a deadly injection. Stitt has denied the board’s clemency suggestions in three different instances: these of Bigler Stouffer, James Coddington and Phillip Hancock, all of whom had been executed.
An Oklahoma state appeals court docket on Wednesday denied a last-minute authorized problem by Littlejohn’s attorneys to the constitutionality of the state’s deadly injection execution methodology. An analogous enchantment filed in a US federal court docket was additionally rejected on Thursday.
Earlier this week, Missouri officers carried out the execution of Marcellus Williams, regardless that there was no DNA proof linking him to the crime for which he was convicted. The sufferer’s household additionally requested for mercy.
Though Littlejohn admitted his function within the Oklahoma theft that killed Meers, he insisted to the tip that his confederate was the one who pulled the set off.
Convicted of Meers’ homicide, Littlejohn repeatedly requested Stitt for clemency however was denied.
“A jury discovered [Littlejohn] responsible and sentenced him to demise. The choice was confirmed by a number of judges,” Stitt stated in a press release issued after the execution. “As a public order governor, it’s troublesome for me to unilaterally reverse that call.”
Oklahoma has carried out 14 executions beneath Stitt, resuming them in 2021 after a hiatus of greater than six years.
Final month, a 3-2 vote in favor of clemency by the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Paroles gave hope to supporters of Littlejohn, his household and his attorneys.
However a state appeals court docket on Wednesday denied a last-minute authorized problem to the constitutionality of the state’s deadly injection execution methodology. An analogous enchantment filed in a US federal court docket was additionally rejected on Thursday.
Steven Harpe, director of the Oklahoma Division of Corrections, stated the deadly injection was carried out with none technical issues.
Throughout Littlejohn’s execution, which started shortly after 10:00 native time (15:00 GMT), his mom sobbed silently and clutched a cross necklace.
Littlejohn’s respiratory grew to become labored earlier than a health care provider pronounced him unconscious and he was pronounced useless 10 minutes later.
