Oklahoma executes a man for a 1992 killing despite board recommending his life be spared

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma executed a man Thursday for his role in the 1992 fatal shooting of a convenience store owner after the governor again rejected a recommendation from the state’s parole board to spare a death row inmate's life.

Emmanuel Littlejohn, 52, received a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and was declared dead at 10:17 a.m.

“A jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death,” Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a statement explaining why he declined to commute Littlejohn's sentence to life in prison without parole. “As a law and order governor, I have a hard time unilaterally overturning that decision.”

Stitt has granted clemency only once out of the five times that the parole board has recommended it during Stitt's nearly six years in office. Oklahoma has carried out 14 executions under Stitt, having resumed them in 2021 after a more than six-year hiatus.

In voting 3-2 last month to recommend clemency, the board appeared to be moved by questions Littlejohn's lawyers raised about whether he or a co-defendant fired the shot that killed Kenneth Meers. Littlejohn's attorneys also suggested the jury was unclear about whether a sentence of life without parole would guarantee someone would never be released.

His lethal injection came just two days after the execution of Marcellus Williams in Missouri, where advocates insisted Williams was innocent.

Strapped to a gurney and with an IV line in his right arm, Littlejohn looked toward his mother and daughter, who witnessed the execution.

“Mom, you OK?” Littlejohn asked.

“I'm OK,” his mother, Ceily Mason, responded.

“Everything is going to be OK. I love you,” he said.

Mason sobbed quietly and clutched a cross necklace during the lethal injection, which began shortly after 10 a.m. Littlejohn's breathing became labored before a doctor declared him unconscious at 10:07 a.m. He was pronounced dead 10 minutes later.

Littlejohn's spiritual advisor, the Rev. Jeff Hood, was inside the death chamber and prayed over him.

Steven Harpe, the director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, said the lethal injection went without any problems.

If an execution set for Thursday evening in Alabama is carried out, it would mark the first time in decades that five death row inmates were put to death in the U.S. within one week. The five executions would also mark another grim milestone — 1,600 executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Littlejohn 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.

During video testimony to the Pardon and Parole Board in early August, 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, 31.

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.

Stitt previously asked one of his appointees to the parole board, Adam Luck, to step down after Luck voted several times to recommend clemency.

The only time Stitt has granted clemency was in 2021, when he commuted Julius Jones’ death sentence to life without parole just hours before Jones was scheduled to receive a lethal injection. Stitt has denied clemency recommendations from the board in three other cases: Bigler Stouffer, James Coddington and Phillip Hancock, all of whom were executed.

A state appellate court on Wednesday denied a last-minute legal challenge from Littlejohn's attorneys to the constitutionality of the state’s lethal injection method of execution. A similar appeal filed in federal court also was rejected Thursday.

FILE - This booking photo provided by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections shows Emmanuel Littlejohn, Feb. 8, 2023. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections via AP, File)

FILE - Augustina Sanders hugs Kim Ludwig, a paralegal in the Federal Public Defender's Office in Oklahoma City, after the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 to recommend clemency for Sanders' brother, Emmanuel Littlejohn, Aug. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Sean Murphy, File)

CAIRO (AP) — New fighting rocked Sudan's capital on Thursday with airstrikes and drone attacks in and around Khartoum amid a worsening cholera outbreak, officials said.

Sudan’s military launched an operation in the early hours of Thursday aimed at taking control of areas in the capital that had been in the hands of its enemy, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Sudanese media reported increased military movements and airstrikes in the districts of Khartoum and Omdurman, the heaviest in the capital area in months.

Mohamed Ibrahim, the health ministry's spokesperson in Khartoum, said in a statement that 4 civilians were killed and 14 others injured in the latest fighting in the Karrari district of the capital.

A military spokesman confirmed the operation was underway, but declined to comment further. The escalation comes as the head of Sudan’s military, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan is expected to address the United Nations’ General Assembly on Thursday.

Jeremy Laurence, a spokesman for the U.N. human rights office in Geneva, said in a statement to The Associated Press Thursday that at least 78 civilians were killed due to artillery shelling and airstrikes since the beginning of September in the Khartoum area.

“Our immediate concern is for the welfare of civilians, and the likelihood of further displacement and damage to civilian infrastructure," he said.

For months, some of the worst fighting has been in the city of El Fasher, the capital of the North Darfur state. RSF forces have laid siege to the city since May. On Thursday, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said that artillery shelling on a market there had killed at least 20 civilians on Sep. 20 and 21.

Meanwhile, the death toll from Sudan’s cholera outbreak jumped by nearly 100 or nearly 20% in only two days, Sudan’s health ministry said Wednesday, in a worrying sign that the disease is spreading more rapidly. A total of 473 people have died from cholera since the country’s rainy season began two months ago, health officials said.

Sudan’s Federal Ministry of Health in a Wednesday update reported on Facebook 14,944 cholera cases across 10 states, with 386 new cases. It said six people died on Tuesday alone in six states.

The majority of cases were reported in Kassala, where UNICEF is collaborating with the ministry and the World Health Organization (WHO) to carry out a second round of the oral cholera vaccination campaign that kicked off last week.

UNICEF delivered 404,000 doses of the vaccine to Sudan on Sep. 9. More vaccination campaigns are expected to be rolled out in other affected states.

Cholera was officially declared an outbreak on August 12 by the health ministry after a new wave of cases was reported starting July 22. The disease is spreading in areas devastated by recent heavy rainfalls and floods, especially in eastern Sudan which sheltered millions of people displaced by the conflict between the Sudanese military and a rival paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Cholera is a highly contagious disease that causes diarrhea, leading to severe dehydration and could be fatal if not immediately treated, according to WHO. It’s transmitted through the ingestion of contaminated food or water.

Over 900 areas in 11 states have been affected by cholera between June and September 24, with the northern state being the most impacted, according to the ministry.

UNICEF said in a statement last week that an estimated 3.4 million children under the age of five are at high risk of epidemic diseases.

The war in Sudan created environments prone to disease outbreaks, impacting millions of people already experiencing food insecurity and displacement. The country plunged into war in April 2023 after tensions increased between the military and the RSF.

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AP chief correspondent in Geneva Jamey Keaten contributed to this report.

This grab from video shows smoke rising over Khartoum, Sudan on Thursday Sept. 26, 2024, after Sudan’s military started an operation to take areas of the capital from its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. (AP Photo/Rashed Ahmed)