Murder of Kenneth Meers
On June 19, 1992, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, 31-year-old convenience store owner Kenneth Meers was murdered during a robbery perpetrated by two gunmen. The murderers, Glenn Bethany and Emmanuel Littlejohn, were arrested and charged with robbing and murdering Meers. Littlejohn was sentenced to death, while Bethany received a life sentence in separate trials between 1993 and 1994.
A controversial point in the case was the lack of direct evidence proving who had killed Meers. Littlejohn maintained his innocence throughout his appeals, but these claims were rejected by the courts. After losing his clemency plea, Littlejohn was executed via lethal injection on September 26, 2024.
Murder
On the night of June 19, 1992, a robbery occurred at a convenience store in Oklahoma City, resulting in the death of the store owner, who was shot by two robbers.On that night, at around 10:15 p.m., 31-year-old Kenneth Meers, the owner of the convenience store, was working with two employees, Tony Hulsey and Hulsey's brother, Danny Waldrup. While they were still doing their work, 20-year-old Emmanuel Antonia Littlejohn and 25-year-old Glenn Roy Bethany entered the store and held Meers at gunpoint, with the intention of robbing him.
At that time, Littlejohn, who had a long criminal record, had just come out of prison for burglary, robbery, and assault, and Bethany was a drug dealer. The two men both owed money to a drug dealer known to them and as they were out of money, the pair decided to commit an armed robbery in order to obtain cash to repay the debt. Armed with a gun, both Littlejohn and Bethany barged into the store and held Meers at gunpoint. During the armed hold-up, one of the men shot Meers in the face. Both men then fled the store. The crime was witnessed by several people, including two of Meers' co-workers and bystanders outside the store. Meers died as a result of the shooting. At the time of his death, Meers, who was born in Indiana, left behind his mother, three brothers, and two sisters. His father died in 1984. Meers was laid to rest at Resthaven Memory Gardens after his funeral at South Colonial Chapel.
There were conflicting witness testimonies over the identity of the killer and whether it was Littlejohn or Bethany who pulled the trigger. One theory was that the man who murdered Meers was Littlejohn, because according to Hulsey, he witnessed Littlejohn holding Meers at gunpoint before the shooting and both Hulsey and Waldrup never saw Bethany carrying a gun. However, witnesses outside the store claimed that the shooter was the taller of the two, and based on the description of the two robbers, who were both African American, Bethany had darker skin than Littlejohn, and he was much taller than Littlejohn, which gave rise to the other theory that Bethany was the shooter. However, no direct evidence was able to prove either theory.
Soon after the shooting, Bethany was arrested in Oklahoma City and remanded without bail at Oklahoma County Jail. Littlejohn remained on the run for about five days before he was apprehended in Wichita, Kansas, and extradited back to Oklahoma to be charged and tried for killing Meers. The two men were thus charged with the robbery-murder of Meers.
In a separate case, together with William Arnold Penny, Littlejohn was also charged with robbery with a dangerous weapon, two counts of first-degree rape and kidnapping.
Trials of Bethany and Littlejohn
On March 11, 1993, Glenn Bethany was convicted of robbery and murder. The prosecution sought the death penalty for Bethany during his sentencing phase. However, Bethany was spared the death sentence and instead, he was jailed for life without chance for parole.A year after Bethany was convicted and sentenced, Emmanuel Littlejohn stood trial in early 1994 before a jury at the District Court of Oklahoma County. During the trial, Littlejohn maintained his innocence and stated that while he participated in the robbery, he was not the person who killed Meers. He pinpointed Bethany as the killer. Both Bethany and the prosecution argued it was Littlejohn who shot and killed Meers.
On November 15, 1994, Littlejohn was found guilty of murder, robbery, and attempted robbery.
Three days after Littlejohn's conviction, on November 18, 1994, the jury returned with their verdict after more than six hours of deliberation, sentencing Littlejohn to death for murder. They also issued a jail term of 300 years for robbery and a consecutive 99 years for attempted robbery.
On November 23, 1994, Littlejohn was formally sentenced to death by Oklahoma County District Judge Charles L. Owens.
Appeals of Littlejohn
After he was sentenced to death, Emmanuel Littlejohn spent about three decades appealing against his sentence, and in all of his appeals, Littlejohn argued that he was innocent and that he never gunned down Kenneth Meers. However, none of his claims were accepted by the courts.First appeal and re-sentencing
On December 31, 1998, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the convictions of Littlejohn for the robbery-murder of Kenneth Meers, but his death sentence for the murder of Meers was vacated in favor of a re-sentencing hearing due to the need to reconsider the evidence so as to determine if the aggravating factors made Littlejohn eligible for either death or life without parole.A re-sentencing trial of Littlejohn took place in October 2000 and it ended on November 8, 2000, with the jury once again issuing the death penalty for Littlejohn. Littlejohn likewise appealed to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals against this decision, but on February 12, 2004, his appeal was dismissed after the court found his death sentence safe to affirm.
Further appeals
In an appeal before District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange of the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma on May 27, 2010, the lawyers of Littlejohn submitted that the same prosecutor who handled both the trials of Bethany and Littlejohn had argued at Bethany's trial that Bethany was the shooter and later argued at Littlejohn's trial that the killer was Littlejohn. However, the court found that there was no error made by the prosecutor, as the court determined that, during Bethany's trial, the prosecutor did not explicitly claim that Bethany was the shooter. Instead, the prosecutor merely "reminded the jurors that their job was to decide whether Bethany was guilty of malice murder or felony murder." The court also observed that in Littlejohn's trial, the prosecutor took a more assertive stance, firmly declaring that Littlejohn was indeed the shooter. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard Littlejohn's follow-up appeal and rejected it on June 25, 2010.A second appeal to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was also dismissed on January 7, 2013. Four years later, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would later turn down a third appeal from Littlejohn on November 7, 2017.
On October 2, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Littlejohn's appeal in his case, which led to Littlejohn losing his final chance of escaping the death sentence, and he became eligible for execution on a date to be decided.
Fate of Littlejohn
While he was appealing against his death sentence, Emmanuel Littlejohn remained on death row at Oklahoma State Penitentiary. At one point while awaiting to be re-sentenced, Littlejohn allegedly heard a fellow prisoner named Christopher Jordan confessing to the 1999 murder of Paul Howell, a crime for which his accomplice Julius Jones was sentenced to death. Jones, whose execution was scheduled to occur on November 18, 2021, had protested his innocence throughout the years and pointed to Jordan as the real killer. Jones's death sentence was, in the end, commuted to life imprisonment without parole merely hours before his scheduled execution.In 2018, when Oklahoma prepared to pass laws to allow executions by nitrogen gas inhalation, Littlejohn and other inmates on death row gave their opinions on the new execution method, and Littlejohn did not agree with the method.
As of February 2020, Littlejohn was one of the 26 death row inmates eligible for execution after exhausting his appeals since October 2018.
Scheduling of execution date
In August 2022, two months after a death row inmate's failed legal challenge against the constitutionality of Oklahoma's execution protocols, the death warrant of Littlejohn was finalized and the execution date was slated to be November 2, 2023; Littlejohn was one of the 25 inmates to have their execution dates scheduled after the ruling itself. However, Littlejohn's execution was delayed for presumed legal reasons.In January 2024, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a legal application to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, seeking approval to schedule the executions of six prisoners, whose death dates would be 90 days apart from each other. Littlejohn was one of those six prisoners on the list.
On July 3, 2024, Littlejohn's second death warrant was released and he was scheduled to be executed on September 26, 2024. Prior to the rescheduling of Littlejohn's execution, convicted rapist-killer Richard Norman Rojem Jr. was put to death on June 27, 2024, for raping and murdering his stepdaughter 40 years ago in July 1984.
Clemency campaign
Clemency hearing
After his execution date was set, anti-death penalty activists took up Littlejohn's case and began a campaign to appeal for clemency on behalf of Littlejohn. Reverend Jeff Hood, a spiritual advisor for death row prisoners, and Abraham Bonowitz, co-founder of an anti-death penalty group, conducted a media conference and both of them stated that Littlejohn deserved mercy given that there was no conclusive evidence to prove that Littlejohn was the killer and that his guilt was not clear-cut. They said it would be an injustice if Bethany were the real killer and Littlejohn was executed for the fatal shooting of Meers despite not pulling the trigger. Hood said he was planning to attend the execution of Littlejohn to accompany him and give him spiritual guidance should Littlejohn's clemency bid be unsuccessful.Littlejohn's clemency hearing took place before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board on August 7, 2024. During the hearing, Littlejohn admitted responsibility for the robbery at Meers's convenience store, but maintained that he did not kill Meers, continuing to argue that Bethany pulled the trigger. Expressing remorse for his part in the death of Meers, Littlejohn asked for forgiveness and offered his sympathy for the family of Meers over their loss. Additionally, Littlejohn's mother, who was 15 when she gave birth to him, pleaded for mercy for her only son, whose death sentence caused her to quit her drug addiction, a problem she struggled with since her adolescent years and pregnancy.
However, Meers's family asked the state to proceed with the execution, describing Meers as a "community-minded" man who was willing to help those in need. One of Meers's brothers told the parole board that his mother died of a broken heart after losing her son, and also read out the final letter of Meers's mother before the board. Additionally, Attorney General Drummond urged the parole board to not grant clemency for Littlejohn, given that Littlejohn was a "violent and manipulative" person who refused to take responsibility for his actions, and added that the family of Meers waited for 32 years with hopes that justice could be served.