Anti-death penalty activists on Monday kicked off a campaign seeking clemency for the next person slated to be executed in Oklahoma.
Emmanuel Littlejohn, who was convicted in 1994 for the 1992 murder of a convenience store owner, was given an execution date of September 26 by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals Wednesday.
Reverend Jeff Hood, a death row spiritual advisor, and Abraham Bonowitz, Death Penalty Action Co-Founder Executive Director, argued at a press conference that a lack of evidence pointing towards Littlejohn’s co-conspirator Glenn Bethany — who is currently serving a life sentence — being the person that fired the fatal shot made the scheduled execution an injustice.
“This is not a clear case,” Hood said. “This is a case where we have a number of issues, a number of problems.”
In an interview with USA Today ahead of the press conference, Littlejohn accepted responsibility for his role in the robbery but maintained his innocence in the murder.
“They don’t want to punish me for what I did do, the robbery and all that,” Littlejohn said. “They want to kill me and I didn’t kill nobody.”
The group presented a video appealing to the people of Oklahoma to contact Governor Kevin Stitt and advocate for Stitt to grant Littlejohn clemency.
“He understands being held accountable for participating in a robbery that went awry,” Bonowitz said. “How is it that the shooter, the actual shooter, is getting a lesser punishment than he is?”
Oklahoma and the death penalty
Stitt has used his clemency power once in his tenure, sparing the life of Julius Jones after a high-profile advocacy campaign. The state has executed 13 people since Stitt lifted a moratorium on executions in 2020.
“Governor Stitt has a moral responsibility to the people of Oklahoma to do the right thing no matter what he has done in the past,” Hood said. “I’m an old preacher, I believe it’s possible for people to get saved.”
Oklahoma has executed 124 people since 1976, the second most in the country since the reinstatement of capital punishment
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board could recommend Littlejohn’s punishment be changed to life in prison without the possibility of parole in a hearing scheduled for August 7. Stitt can only act if the board recommends clemency.
What happened in Emmanuel Littlejohn’s case?
Littlejohn was one of two robbers who took money from the Root-N-Scoot convenience store in south Oklahoma City on June 19, 1992. Littlejohn was then 20.
The owner, Kenneth Meers, 31, was killed by a single shot to the face as he charged at the robbers with a broom. Witnesses differed on who fired the gun. Hood and Bonowitz pointed to witnesses that said the “taller man” was the shooter, referring to Bethany.
Bethany was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 1993.
Littlejohn was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1994. A second jury in 2000 also voted for the death penalty at a resentencing trial. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ordered the resentencing because of improper testimony from a jailhouse snitch.
Central to Littlejohn’s appeal was a claim of prosecutorial misconduct. His attorneys complained the same prosecutor argued at the first trial that Bethany was the shooter and then argued at the subsequent trial that Littlejohn was the shooter.
“It has long been established that prosecutors may not violate fundamental principles of fairness,” one attorney told a federal judge in 2005.
Littlejohn exhausted his appeals in 2018.
That complaint was repeatedly rejected on appeal. The Court of Criminal Appeals found in 1998 the prosecutor did not act improperly “given the uncertainty of the evidence.”
A federal judge in 2010 found the prosecutor made no outright assertions that Bethany was the shooter at the first trial but instead “reminded the jurors that it was their task to determine whether Bethany was guilty of malice murder or felony murder.”
The judge noted that in Littlejohn’s trial the prosecutor went further and adamantly asserted that he was the actualshooter.
