A person has been put to death by the authorities within the US state of Oklahoma regardless of a parole board recommending that the lifetime of Emmanuel Littlejohn be spared.
Littlejohn, 52, was executed by deadly injection on Thursday morning for the 1992 theft of a store proprietor that turned deadly. Experiences stated that as he lay strapped to the gurney with an IV line in his proper arm, he regarded in direction of his mom and daughter who have been watching.
“The whole lot goes to be OK. I like you,” Littlejohn stated.
The execution on the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, 210 kilometres (130 miles) east of Oklahoma Metropolis, was the fourth within the US in lower than per week and comes hours earlier than the state of Alabama is ready to make use of nitrogen gasoline to execute Alan Eugene Miller on Thursday night.
If the execution in Alabama proceeds, it will be the primary time in many years that 5 death row inmates have been executed in the US inside one week, in line with the Dying Penalty Info Middle.
The 5 executions would additionally mark one other grim milestone: 1,600 executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the US Supreme Court docket in 1976.
Littlejohn was 20 when prosecutors say he and co-defendant Glenn Bethany robbed the Root-N-Scoot comfort retailer in south Oklahoma Metropolis in June 1992.
Throughout video testimony to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board in early August, Littlejohn apologised to the household of Kenneth Meers, the comfort retailer proprietor who was killed in the course of the theft, however denied firing the deadly shot.
Littlejohn’s attorneys identified that the identical prosecutor tried Bethany and Littlejohn in separate trials utilizing an almost similar concept, despite the fact that there was just one shooter and one bullet that killed Meers, 31.
However prosecutors advised the board that two teenage retailer workers who witnessed the theft each stated Littlejohn, not Bethany, fired the deadly shot. Bethany was sentenced to life in jail with out parole.
Littlejohn’s attorneys additionally argued that killings ensuing from a theft are not often thought-about dying penalty instances and that prosecutors immediately wouldn’t have pursued the final word punishment.
“It’s evident that Emmanuel wouldn’t have been sentenced to dying if he’d been tried in 2024 and even 2004,” legal professional Caitlin Hoeberlein advised the board.
Battles for clemency
Littlejohn was prosecuted by former Oklahoma County District Lawyer Robert Macy, who was recognized for his zealous pursuit of the dying penalty and secured 54 dying sentences throughout greater than 20 years in workplace.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican, beforehand requested considered one of his appointees to the parole board, Adam Luck, to step down after Luck voted a number of occasions to advocate clemency.
The one time Stitt has granted clemency was in 2021, when he commuted Julius Jones’s dying sentence to life with out parole simply hours earlier than Jones was scheduled to obtain a deadly injection. Stitt has denied clemency suggestions from the board in three different instances: these of Bigler Stouffer, James Coddington and Phillip Hancock, all of whom have been executed.
An Oklahoma state appellate court docket on Wednesday denied a last-minute authorized problem from Littlejohn’s attorneys to the constitutionality of the state’s deadly injection technique of execution. An analogous attraction filed in US federal court docket additionally was rejected Thursday.
Earlier this week, officers in Missouri carried out the execution of Marcellus Williams, regardless of there being no DNA proof to tie him to the crime for which he was convicted. The household of the sufferer had additionally appealed for clemency.
Although Littlejohn admitted to his position within the Oklahoma theft that killed Meers, he insisted till the very finish that his confederate was the one who pulled the set off.
Convicted of Meers’s homicide, Littlejohn repeatedly appealed for mercy to Stitt – and was refused.
“A jury discovered [Littlejohn] responsible and sentenced him to dying. The choice was upheld by a number of judges,” Stitt stated in a press release launched after the execution. “As a regulation and order governor, I’ve a tough time unilaterally overturning that call.”
Oklahoma has carried out 14 executions beneath Stitt, having resumed them in 2021 after a greater than six-year hiatus.
Final month, a 3-2 vote in favour of clemency by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board gave hope to Littlejohn’s supporters, his household and his legal professionals.
However a state appellate court docket on Wednesday denied a last-minute authorized problem to the constitutionality of the state’s deadly injection technique of execution. An analogous attraction filed in US federal court docket was additionally rejected on Thursday.
Steven Harpe, the director of the Oklahoma Division of Corrections, stated the deadly injection went forward with none technical issues.
Throughout Littlejohn’s execution, which started shortly after 10am native time (15:00 GMT), his mom sobbed quietly and clutched a cross necklace.
Littlejohn’s respiration turned laboured earlier than a physician declared him unconscious, and he was pronounced useless 10 minutes later.