FILE - This photo provided by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections shows Richard Rojem, a death row inmate housed at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Okla., Feb. 11, 2023. Oklahoma's Pardon and Parole Board is denying clemency for Rojem, convicted of raping and killing a 7-year-old girl in 1984. Monday's 5-0 decision paves the way for 66-year-old Richard Rojem to be executed by lethal injection on June 27, 2024. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections via AP, File)
McALESTER, Okla. (AP) – Oklahoma executed a man Thursday who was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a 7-year-old girl in 1984.
Richard Rojem, 66, received a three-drug lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and was declared dead at 10:16 a.m., prison officials said.
Rojem had denied responsibility for killing his former stepdaughter, Layla Cummings. The child’s mutilated and partially clothed body was discovered in a field in rural Washita County near the town of Burns Flat on July 7, 1984. She had been stabbed to death.
Rojem was previously convicted of raping two teenage girls in Michigan, and prosecutors said he was angry at Layla Cummings because she reported that Rojem sexually abused her, leading to his divorce from the girl’s mother and his return to prison for violating his parole.
Rojem’s attorneys argued at a clemency hearing this month that DNA evidence taken from the girl’s fingernails did not link him to the crime.
“If my client’s DNA is not present, he should not be convicted,” attorney Jack Fisher said.
Layla’s mother, Mindy Lynn Cummings, wrote to the parole board: “For many years, the shock of losing her and the knowledge of the sheer terror, pain and suffering that she endured at the hands of this soulless monster was more than I could fathom how to survive day to day,”
Rojem, who testified at the hearing via a video link from prison, said he wasn’t responsible for the girl’s death. The panel voted 5-0 not to recommend to the governor that Rojem’s life be spared.
“I wasn’t a good human being for the first part of my life, and I don’t deny that,” said Rojem, handcuffed and wearing a red prison uniform. “But I went to prison. I learned my lesson and I left all that behind.”
Prosecutors said there was plenty of evidence to convict Rojem, including a fingerprint that was 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 also was 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 deliberations. His previous death sentences were twice overturned by appellate courts because of trial errors. A Custer County jury ultimately handed him his third death sentence in 2007.
Oklahoma, which has executed more inmates per capita than any other state in the nation since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, has now carried out 13 executions since resuming lethal injections in October 2021 following a nearly six-year hiatus resulting from problems with executions in 2014 and 2015.
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