OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma plans to execute Thursday a man convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering a 7-year-old girl in 1984.
Richard Rojem, 66, has exhausted his appeals and is expected to receive a three-drug lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
During a clemency hearing earlier this monthRojem denied responsibility for the murder of his former stepdaughter, Layla Cummings. The child’s mutilated and partially clothed body was discovered in a field in western Oklahoma, near the town of Burns Flat. She had been stabbed to death.
“I was not a good person in the first part of my life, and I don’t deny that,” said Rojem, handcuffed and dressed in a red prison uniform, as he appeared via video link from prison for the State Pardon. and Parole Board. “But I went to prison. I learned my lesson and I put it all behind me.”
The council unanimously rejected Rojem’s request for mercy. Rojem’s attorney, Jack Fisher, said there are no pending appeals that would stop his execution.
Rojem was previously convicted of raping two teenage girls in Michigan. Prosecutors say he was angry with Layla Cummings because she reported he had sexually assaulted her. This led to his divorce from the girl’s mother and his return to prison for violating his parole conditions.
“For years, the shock of losing her and knowing the sheer fear, pain and suffering she endured at the hands of this soulless monster was more than I could fathom to survive day to day,” Layla’s mother, Mindy Lynn Cummings, wrote to the parole board.
Rojem’s attorneys argued that DNA evidence from the girl’s fingernails did not link him to the crime. They urged the pardon committee to recommend that his life be spared and that his sentence be commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“If my client’s DNA is not present, he should not be convicted,” Fisher said.
Prosecutors say sufficient evidence besides DNA was used to convict Rojem, including a fingerprint discovered outside the girl’s apartment on a cup from a bar Rojem left just before the girl was kidnapped. A condom wrapper found near the girl’s body was also linked to a used condom found in Rojem’s bedroom, prosecutors said.
A Washita County jury convicted Rojem in 1985 after just 45 minutes of deliberation. His previous death sentences were twice overturned by appeals courts due to procedural errors. A Custer County jury finally handed him his third death sentence in 2007.
Oklahoma, which was executed more prisoners per capita than any other state in the country since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1976, has carried out 12 executions since then resuming lethal injections in October 2021 after a hiatus of almost six years due to problems with executions in 2014 and 2015.
Opponents of the death penalty planned to hold vigils Thursday outside the governor’s mansion in Oklahoma City and the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
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