A state appeals court on Wednesday rejected a last-minute challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s method of execution, lethal injection. A similar appeal filed in federal court was also rejected on Thursday.

Littlejohn is the third Oklahoma inmate executed this year and the 14th since the state resumed executions in 2021 after a hiatus of more than six years. If another execution scheduled for Thursday night in Alabama goes ahead, it would be the first time in decades that five death row inmates have been executed in the United States in 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.