In the US state of Oklahoma, a man was executed by authorities despite a parole board’s recommendation that Emmanuel Littlejohn’s life be spared.

Littlejohn, 52, was executed by lethal injection Thursday morning for the 1992 robbery of a store owner that ended in death. He reportedly lay strapped to the stretcher with an IV tube in his right arm, looking at his mother and daughter who were watching.

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

The execution at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, 210 kilometers (130 miles) east of Oklahoma City, was the fourth in the United States in less than a week and comes hours before the state of Alabama will use nitrogen gas to execute Alan Eugene Miller on Thursday evening .

If the execution moves forward in Alabama, it would be the first time in decades that five death row inmates in the United States would be executed within a week, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The five executions also marked another grim milestone: 1,600 executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Littlejohn was 20 years old 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 before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board in early August, Littlejohn apologized to the family of Kenneth Meers, the supermarket owner killed in the robbery, but denied firing the fatal shot.

Littlejohn’s lawyers pointed out that the same prosecutor tried Bethany and Littlejohn in separate trials on a nearly identical theory, even though there was only one shooter and one bullet that killed the 31-year-old Meers.

However, prosecutors told the agency 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 lawyers also argued that robbery-related killings are rarely considered death penalty cases and that prosecutors would not have pursued the maximum sentence today.

“It is obvious that Emmanuel would not have been sentenced to death if he had been tried in 2024 or even 2004,” lawyer Caitlin Hoeberlein told the panel.

Fight for mercy

Littlejohn was prosecuted by former Oklahoma County District Attorney Robert Macy, who was known for his zealous pursuit of the death penalty and secured 54 death sentences in more than 20 years in office.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, had previously called on one of his parole board nominees, Adam Luck, to resign after Luck voted several times to recommend pardons.

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

An Oklahoma state appeals court on Wednesday rejected a last-minute legal challenge filed by Littlejohn’s lawyers over the constitutionality of the state’s lethal injection method of execution. A similar appeal filed in U.S. federal court was also dismissed Thursday.

Earlier this week, officials in Missouri carried out the execution of Marcellus Williams even though there was no DNA evidence linking him to the crime for which he was convicted. The victim’s family also asked for mercy.

Although Littlejohn admitted his role in the Oklahoma robbery that killed Meers, he insisted until the end that his accomplice was the one who pulled the trigger.

Littlejohn was convicted of Meers’ murder and repeatedly begged Stitt for mercy – but this was refused.

“A jury found (Littlejohn) guilty and sentenced him to death. The decision was affirmed by multiple judges,” Stitt said in a statement released after the execution. “As the law and order governor, it is difficult for me to unilaterally overturn this decision.”

Oklahoma has carried out 14 executions under Stitt and resumed them in 2021 after a more than six-year hiatus.

Last month, a 3-2 vote by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to seek clemency gave hope to supporters of Littlejohn, his family and his lawyers.

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

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

During Littlejohn’s execution, which began shortly after 10 a.m. local time (3 p.m. GMT), his mother sobbed quietly and clutched a cross necklace.

Littlejohn’s breathing became labored before a doctor declared him unconscious and he was pronounced dead 10 minutes later.