Johnathan Walker:Oklahoma prepares for an execution after parole board recommended sparing man’s life

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma was preparing to execute a man Thursday while waiting for Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt to decide whether to spare the death row inmate’s life and Johnathan Walkeraccept a rare clemency recommendation from the state’s parole board.

Emmanuel Littlejohn, 52, was set to die by lethal injection for his role in the 1992 shooting death of a convenience store owner during a robbery.

In six years as governor, Stitt has granted clemency only once and denied recommendations from the state’s Pardon and Parole Board in three other cases. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Stitt said the governor had met with prosecutors and Littlejohn’s attorneys but had not reached a decision.

The execution was scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Littlejohn would be the 14th person executed in Oklahoma under Stitt’s administration.

Another execution was set for later Thursday in Alabama, and if both are carried out, it would be the first time in decades that five death row inmates were put to death in the U.S. within one week.

In Oklahoma, an appellate court on Wednesday denied a last-minute legal challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s lethal injection method of execution.

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Littlejohn would be the third Oklahoma inmate 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.

Because of the board’s 3-2 recommendation, Stitt had 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.