Oklahoma executed A man was sentenced Thursday for his role in the 1992 shooting death of a supermarket owner after the governor rejected the state parole board’s recommendation to spare his life.

Emmanuel Littlejohn, 52, received a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and was pronounced dead at 10:17 a.m. His execution came after Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt refused to commute his sentence to life without parole.

“A jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death,” Stitt said. He added: “As a governor who stands for law and order, it is difficult for me to unilaterally overturn this decision.”

Strapped to a stretcher with an intravenous line in his right arm, Littlejohn looked at his mother and daughter who were watching the execution.

“Mom, are you okay?” asked Littlejohn.

“I’m fine,” replied his mother, Ceily Mason.

“Everything will be fine. I love you,” he said.

Mason sobbed quietly and clutched a necklace with a cross on it during the lethal injection, which began shortly after 10:00 a.m. Littlejohn’s breathing became labored before a doctor pronounced him unconscious at 10:07 a.m. He was pronounced dead ten minutes later.

Littlejohn’s spiritual advisor, Reverend Jeff Hood, was in the death chamber praying for him.

Steven Harpe, director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, said the lethal injection went smoothly.

A state appeals court on Wednesday dismissed a last-minute lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Method of execution with lethal injectionA similar appeal filed in federal court was also rejected on Thursday.

Littlejohn is the Third prisoner executed in Oklahoma this year and the 14th since the state Executions to resume in 2021 after a break of more than six years. If another execution is scheduled for Thursday evening in Alabama, it would be the first time in decades that five people sentenced to death would be executed in the United States within a week.

The five executions would also mark another grim milestone: According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 1,600 executions have been carried out since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Littlejohn was 20 years old when he and co-defendant Glenn Bethany robbed the Root-N-Scoot convenience store in south Oklahoma City in June 1992, according to prosecutors. The store owner, 31-year-old Kenneth Meers, was killed.

During video testimony before the Board of Pardons and Parole last month, Littlejohn apologized to Meers’ family but denied firing the fatal shot. Littlejohn’s lawyers pointed out that the same prosecutor had prosecuted Bethany and Littlejohn in separate trials using a nearly identical theory, even though there was only one shooter and one bullet that killed Meers.

However, prosecutors told the panel that two teenage store employees who witnessed the robbery both testified that Littlejohn, not Bethany, fired the fatal shot. Bethany was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Littlejohn’s lawyers also argued that homicides resulting from robberies are rarely punishable by death and that prosecutors today would not seek the maximum sentence.

“It is obvious that Emmanuel would not have been sentenced to death if his trial had taken place in 2024 or even in 2004,” attorney Caitlin Hoeberlein told the panel.

Littlejohn was tried by Bob Macy, a former Oklahoma County district attorney known for his passionate pursuit of the death penalty, who obtained 54 death sentences during his more than 20 years in office.

The panel’s 3-2 recommendation gave Stitt the opportunity to commute Littlejohn’s sentence to life without parole.

Stitt has granted clemency only once during his nearly six years in office, in 2021 when he commuted Julius Jones’ death sentence to life without parole just hours before Jones was scheduled to receive the lethal injection. Stitt has rejected panel recommendations for clemency in three other cases: Bigler Stouffer, James Coddington and Phillip Hancock, all of whom were executed.

“Justice has been done for the murder of Kenny Meers,” Attorney General Gentner Drummond said after the execution. “I pray that today brings some measure of peace to the Meers family who have waited 32 long years for justice.”