OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 Wednesday to recommend to the governor that he spare the life of a man sentenced to death for his role in the death of a convenience store owner during a 1992 robbery.
The board’s close call means the fate of Emmanuel Littlejohn, 52, now rests with Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who can commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Stitt has granted only one pardon, in 2021, to death row inmate Julius Jones, commuted his sentence to life without parole, just hours before Jones was to receive a lethal injection. Stitt has rejected the board’s recommendations for clemency in three other cases: Larger Stouffer, James Coddington And Philip Hancockall of whom were executed.
“I’m not giving up,” Littlejohn’s sister, Augustina Sanders, said after the board’s vote. “Just spare my brother’s life. He’s not the person they made him out to be.”
Stitt’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the board’s decision, but Stitt has previously said that he and his staff speak with attorneys for both sides and with family members of the victim before making a decision on a case in which a clemency has been recommended.
Littlejohn was sentenced to death by two different Oklahoma County juries for his role in the shooting death of 31-year-old Kenneth Meers, co-owner of the Root-N-Scoot convenience store in southeast Oklahoma City.
Prosecutors said Littlejohn and a co-defendant, Glenn Bethany, had robbed the store to get money to pay off a drug debt. Littlejohn, who had a long criminal history and had just been released from prison, shot Meers as he emerged from the store with a broom.
Assistant Attorney General Tessa Henry said two teenagers who worked with Meers at the store both described Littlejohn as the shooter.
“Both boys were adamant that Littlejohn was the one with the gun and that Bethany did not have a gun,” she told the panel.
Bethany was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Littlejohn, testifying before the panel via video link from Oklahoma State Penitentiary, apologized to Meers’ family and acknowledged his role in the robbery, but denied firing the fatal shot.
“I have admitted my part,” Littlejohn said. “I committed a robbery with devastating consequences, but I did not kill Mr. Meers.
“Neither Oklahoma nor the Meers family will benefit if you decide to kill me.”
Littlejohn’s attorneys argued that murders resulting from a robbery in Oklahoma rarely result in the death penalty and that prosecutors today would not have sought the ultimate punishment.
Defense attorney Caitlin Hoeberlein said that robbery-murder accounts for less than 2 percent of Oklahoma’s death sentences and that the penalty hasn’t been imposed in a similar case in more than 15 years.
“It is clear that Emmanuel would not have been sentenced to death if he had been tried in 2024 or even 2004,” she said.
Littlejohn was prosecuted by former Oklahoma County District Attorney Bob Macy, who was known for his zealous fight for the death penalty and obtained 54 death sentences during his more than 20 years in office.
Callie Heller, an assistant federal prosecutor, said it was problematic that prosecutors in both Bethany’s and Littlejohn’s murder cases argued that they were both the shooter. She added that some jurors were concerned that a life sentence without parole meant the defendant would never be released.
“Is it fair that a man should be executed for an act that prosecutors allege another man committed, when the evidence of guilt is inconclusive?” she asked.