Grapevine

Oklahoma executes man despite parole board recommending life be spared

The US execution comes days after that of Marcellus Williams in Missouri, where the victim’s family also asked for clemency.

A man has been put to death by the authorities in the US state of Oklahoma despite a parole board recommending that the life of Emmanuel Littlejohn be spared.

Littlejohn, 52, was executed by lethal injection on Thursday morning for the 1992 robbery of a shop owner that turned fatal. Reports said that as he lay strapped to the gurney with an IV line in his right arm, he looked towards his mother and daughter who were watching.

“Everything is going to be OK. I love you,” Littlejohn said.

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