Emmanuel Littlejohn, 52, is set to be executed in Oklahoma on Thursday — despite serious questions over whether or not he is guilty of the crime he is condemned for. Littlejohn was convicted of murdering Kenneth Meers, 31, during a robbery at the Root-N-Scoot convenience store Meers owned in Oklahoma City in 1992. Meers was shot and killed by a single bullet, but both men who took part in the robbery — Littlejohn, then 20 years old, and Glenn Bethany, then 26 — were charged and convicted in his murder, NBC reports. Littlejohn and his legal team have argued that his accomplice was the sole shooter and that he should not be executed because his case involves “inconsistent prosecutions.” Multiple jurors submitted sworn affidavits in support of Littlejohn’s clemency, claiming they mistakenly voted for the death penalty because they misunderstood how a sentence of life without parole works. “I would have been OK with a life sentence,” Littlejohn said in an interview last month. “But a death sentence for robbery? I’m not cool with that.”
While Littlejohn has exhausted his appeals, he awaits a clemency decision from Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, after the state parole board voted 3-2 to recommend commuting his sentence to life without parole. Both Bethany and Littlejohn could be charged with the crime because of a statute called felony murder, which allows anyone who is charged with a violent felony to also be charged with murder if the crime results in a death. But Littlejohn’s lawyers have argued for decades that he should not be executed because prosecutors offered contradictory accounts of Meers’ murder — arguing first in Bethany’s trial that Bethany was the shooter and then arguing that Littlejohn was the shooter in his own trial after Bethany had already been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. When Littlejohn went to trial the next year, the prosecution argued that he was the one who fired the shot that killed Meers, saying he was the only one who had a gun during the robbery. In an interview, Littlejohn acknowledged his part in the robbery, which he described as a drug deal gone wrong. But he maintained he did not fire the fatal shot. “All I know is when I left the store, Mr. Meers was still alive,” he said. “I didn’t kill Mr. Meers.”
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