Death row inmate Emmanuel Littlejohn set for execution Sept. 26

As the end grows closer, death row inmate Emmanuel Littlejohn hasn't been resting well.

"When they're talking about killing you, it's kind of hard to sleep. That's all you think about," he said in a phone call in June from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

He maintains he is just a robber, not a murderer, and shouldn't be executed for a 1992 fatal shooting at an Oklahoma City convenience store.

"I ain't going to say I'm innocent because I was there. But I didn't kill nobody. I didn't shoot nobody. That's not me," he said. "It ain't fair. It ain't fair at all."

Littlejohn, 52, is now set to be executed by lethal injection on Sept. 26.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals this week scheduled the execution after getting notice that convicted child murderer Richard Norman Rojem Jr. had been put to death June 27.

The court decided in May to schedule executions one at a time 90 days apart.

What happened in Emmanuel Littlejohn's case?

Littlejohn was one of two robbers who took money from the Root-N-Scoot convenience store in south Oklahoma City on June 19, 1992. Littlejohn was then 20.

The owner, Kenneth Meers, 31, was killed by a single shot to the face as he charged at the robbers with a broom. Witnesses differed on who was the triggerman.

Littlejohn has maintained since his arrest that he wasn't the shooter.

Tried first in 1993 was robber Glenn Bethany. His jury chose life in prison without the possibility of parole after finding him guilty of first-degree murder.

Tried in 1994 was Littlejohn. His jury voted for the death penalty after finding him guilty of first-degree murder. A second jury in 2000 also voted for the death penalty at a resentencing trial. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ordered the resentencing because of improper testimony from a jailhouse snitch.

Littlejohn exhausted his appeals in 2018.

Central to his appeals was a claim of prosecutor misconduct. His attorneys complained the same prosecutor argued at the first trial that Bethany was the shooter and then argued at the subsequent trial that Littlejohn was the shooter.

"It has long been established that prosecutors may not violate fundamental principles of fairness," one attorney told a federal judge in 2005.

That complaint was repeatedly rejected on appeal. The Court of Criminal Appeals found in 1998 the prosecutor did not act improperly "given the uncertainty of the evidence."

The federal judge in 2010 found the prosecutor made no outright assertions that Bethany was the shooter at the first trial but instead "reminded the jurors that it was their task to determine whether Bethany was guilty of malice murder or felony murder."

The judge noted that in Littlejohn's trial the prosecutor went further and adamantly asserted that he was the actualshooter.

A clemency hearing is set for Aug. 7.

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board could recommend Littlejohn's punishment be changed to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Gov. Kevin Stitt can only act if the board recommends clemency.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Death row inmate Emmanuel Littlejohn set for execution Sept. 26