A parole board recommended clemency for Emmanuel Littlejohn. Oklahoma executed him anyway

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Emmanuel Antonio Littlejohn has become the fourth US death row inmate to be executed in the last week, despite an Oklahoma clemency board voting to commute his sentence. I committed a robbery that had devastating consequences,” Littlejohn told a clemency board Attorneys filed last-minute attempts to spare Littlejohn’s life, but judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals voted against a stay of execution 5 to 0 on Wednesday. But, I repeat, I did not kill Mr. Meers.” Still, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond and other state officials told the parole board Littlejohn admitted to killing Meers after the incident, claiming he told Meers’s brother: “He’s still dead. He ain’t coming back.” After the clemency board’s ruling, Drummond said he remained “steadfast that the family of Kenny Meers has waited far too long for justice to be done.” “My office intends to make our case to the governor why there should not be clemency granted to this violent and manipulative killer.” At a news conference on Wednesday, the death row inmate’s sister, Augustina Littlejohn, described Littlejohn as a “big kid in a 52-year-old man’s body.” “He is a son, he is a father, he is a brother, he is a grandfather, he is an uncle,” she said.