Oklahoma sentenced a man on Thursday who was convicted of kidnapping, raping, and killing his former stepdaughter, 7-year-old Layla Cummings, in 1984.
Richard Rojem, 66, had exhausted his appeals and was given a three-drug fatal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Rojem had been imprisoned since 1985 and was the longest-serving inmate on Oklahoma’s execution row.
When asked whether he had any last words, Rojem, who was tied to a gurney and had an IV in his tattooed left arm, replied, “No. “I have said my goodbyes.”
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Steven Harpe, Director of the State Department of Corrections, stated that the execution began at 10:03 a.m. Rojem gazed momentarily at numerous witnesses in a room close to the death chamber before administering the first dose, the sedative midazolam. During Rojem’s execution, he was accompanied by a spiritual adviser.
Harpe said that Rojem was declared unconscious at 10:08 a.m. He was pronounced deceased at 10:16 a.m.
“Justice for Layla Cummings was finally served this morning with the execution of the monster responsible for her rape and murder,” state Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement following the execution. “Layla’s family has suffered indescribable pain for nearly 40 years. My prayer is that today’s activity gives solace to those who loved her.”
Harpe said Rojem was served his final meal Wednesday at 5:48 p.m., which contained a small Little Caesars pizza with double cheese and double pepperoni, ginger ale, and two vanilla ice cream cups.
During a clemency hearing earlier this month, Rojem denied culpability for the girl’s death. The child’s damaged and partially dressed body was discovered in a field in western Oklahoma near Burns Flat. She’d been stabbed to death.
“I wasn’t a good human being for the first part of my life, and I don’t deny that,” Rojem, chained and dressed in a red prison uniform, told the state’s Pardon and Parole Board via video link from behind bars. But I went to prison. I learned my lesson and left everything behind.”
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The board unanimously dismissed Rojem’s request for mercy. Rojem’s attorney, Jack Fisher, stated that there were no active challenges that may have prevented his execution.
Rojem was previously convicted of raping two adolescent girls in Michigan, and prosecutors said he was upset with Layla Cummings because she reported that he sexually abused her, which resulted in his divorce from the girl’s mother and his return to prison for breaking his parole.
“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,” Layla’s mother, Mindy Lynn Cummings, wrote to the parole board.
Before the execution, Drummond described Rojem as a “real-life monster who deserves the same lack of mercy he showed to the child he savagely murdered.
Rojem’s attorneys contended that DNA evidence from the girl’s fingernails did not link him to the crime, and they petitioned the mercy board to save his life and commute his sentence to life in prison without parole.
“If my client’s DNA is not present, he should not be convicted,” Fisher informed the crowd.
Prosecutors claim that evidence other than DNA was used to convict Rojem, including a fingerprint found outside the girl’s residence on a cup from a bar Rojem left just before the girl was stolen. According to authorities, a condom wrapper recovered near the girl’s body was linked to a used condom discovered in Rojem’s bedroom.
A Washita County jury convicted Rojem in 1985 after only 45 minutes of deliberation. His previous death sentences had been reversed twice by appeal courts due to trial flaws. In 2007, a Custer County jury sentenced him to death for the third time.
According to CBSNEWS Oklahoma, which has executed more inmates per capita than any other state in the country 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 caused by execution-related issues in 2014 and 2015.
Opponents of the death sentence planned vigils Thursday outside the governor’s house in Oklahoma City and the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.