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#Post#: 638--------------------------------------------------
~ Richard Rojem, Jr., 27Jun24, (OK) ~
By: BuzzC Date: June 1, 2024, 9:03 pm
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Death row inmate Richard Rojem set for execution June 27--
May 17th, 2024
[IMG]
HTML https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1mAdSS.img?w=768&h=427&m=6[/img]
The execution gurney and witness chairs are shown in this image
from a video released by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday scheduled an
execution date for a convicted child murderer who has been on
death row almost 40 years.
Richard Norman Rojem Jr., is now set to be executed June 27 for
the 1984 murder of a 7-year-old girl.
He has been on death row for decades because he twice won
challenges to his punishment. Rojem, 66, claims he is innocent.
The execution is set to be carried out by lethal injection at
the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
The victim, Layla Dawn Cummings, was his former stepdaughter.
She was abducted late July 6 or early July 7 in 1984 from an Elk
City apartment while her mother was at work at a restaurant. A
farmer found her body the morning of July 7 in a plowed field
near Burns Flat.
She had been **** and stabbed.
Rojem, then 26, lived at the time in Burns Flat. He met the
victim's mother, Mindy Cummings, while he was in prison in
Michigan for sex offenses, according to court records. She was
the sister of his cellmate. They had been divorced for about two
months at the time of the murder. He had been seeking a
reconciliation.
Jurors at a 1985 trial in Washita County District Court chose
the death penalty as punishment after convicting him in only 45
minutes of kidnapping, **** and first-degree murder.
His first death sentence was thrown out in 2001 because of a
mistake on jury instructions. A new jury in Washita County
District Court went with the death penalty again at a
resentencing trial in 2003.
His second death sentence was thrown out three years later
because of a mistake in the jury selection process. A second
resentencing trial was held in Custer County District Court in
2007. Jurors there also agreed to the death penalty.
Rojem exhausted the appeals of his third death sentence in 2017.
In upholding his conviction in 1988, the Oklahoma Court of
Criminal Appeals noted he "was connected to the offenses by a
significant amount of circumstantial evidence."
The last execution in Oklahoma was April 4. Attorney General
Gentner Drummond on Monday asked the court to set Rojem's
execution approximately 90 days from April 4 and on a Thursday.
The court on May 7 announced future executions will be set 90
days apart "unless circumstances dictate modification."
The attorney general had asked for 90 days between executions to
reduce the stress on the volunteer execution teams. He was
joined in the request by Steven Harpe, the executive director of
the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.
"The present pace of executions, every 60 days, is too onerous
and not sustainable," Harpe said.
The date chosen Friday is actually 84 days since the last
execution. Setting it closer to 90 days and on a Thursday would
have put it on a holiday, Independence Day.
Rojem had faced execution on Oct. 5, 2023, under a schedule
released in 2022 for 25 inmates. That schedule was eventually
scrapped.
8)
#Post#: 650--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Richard Rojem, Jr., 27Jun24, (OK) ~
By: BuzzC Date: June 27, 2024, 1:16 pm
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Oklahoma Executes Man for '84 Rape, Murder of Girl, 7--
Thursday, June 27th, 2024
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.
Rojem, who also 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.
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.
"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, when he appeared via a video link from prison
before the state's Pardon and Parole Board. "But I went to
prison. I learned my lesson and I left all that behind."
The board unanimously denied Rojem's bid for mercy. Rojem's
attorney, Jack Fisher, said there are no pending appeals that
would halt his execution.
"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.
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 carried out 12 executions since resuming lethal
injections in October 2021 following a nearly six-year hiatus
resulting from problems with executions in 2014 and 2015.
8)
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