Richard Rojem, 66, has exhausted his appeals and is scheduled to obtain a three-drug deadly injection on the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
During a clemency listening to earlier this month, Rojem denied accountability for killing his former stepdaughter, Layla Cummings. The kid’s mutilated and partially clothed physique was found in a discipline in western Oklahoma close to the city of Burns Flat. She had been stabbed to demise.
Oklahoma Department of Corrections / AP
“I wasn’t human being for the primary a part of my life, and I do not deny that,” mentioned Rojem, handcuffed and sporting a purple jail uniform, when he appeared by way of a video hyperlink from jail earlier than the state’s Pardon and Parole Board. “But I went to jail. I realized my lesson and I left all that behind.”
The board unanimously denied Rojem’s bid for mercy. Rojem’s legal professional, Jack Fisher, mentioned there aren’t any pending appeals that might halt his execution.
Rojem was beforehand convicted of raping two teenage ladies in Michigan and prosecutors allege he was offended at Layla Cummings as a result of she reported that he sexually abused her, resulting in his divorce from the lady’s mom and his return to jail for violating his parole.
“For a few years, the shock of shedding her and the information of the sheer terror, ache and struggling that she endured by the hands of this soulless monster was greater than I might fathom tips on how to survive daily,” Layla’s mom, Mindy Lynn Cummings, wrote to the parole board.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond mentioned Rojem is a “real-life monster who deserves the identical absence of mercy he confirmed to the kid he savagely murdered,” CBS Oklahoma City affiliate KWTV reports.
Rojem’s attorneys argued that DNA proof taken from the lady’s fingernails didn’t hyperlink him to the crime and urged the clemency board to advocate his life be spared and that his sentence be commuted to life in jail with out parole.
“If my consumer’s DNA shouldn’t be current, he shouldn’t be convicted,” Fisher mentioned.
Prosecutors say loads of proof aside from DNA was used to convict Rojem, together with a fingerprint that was found exterior the lady’s condominium on a cup from a bar Rojem left simply earlier than the lady was kidnapped. A condom wrapper discovered close to the lady’s physique additionally was linked to a used condom present in Rojem’s bed room, prosecutors mentioned.
A Washita County jury convicted Rojem in 1985 after simply 45 minutes of deliberations. His earlier demise sentences have been twice overturned by appellate courts due to trial errors. A Custer County jury in the end handed him his third demise sentence in 2007.
Oklahoma, which has executed extra inmates per capita than every other state within the nation for the reason that demise penalty was reinstated in 1976, has carried out 12 executions since resuming deadly injections in October 2021 following an almost six-year hiatus ensuing from issues with executions in 2014 and 2015.
Death penalty opponents deliberate to carry vigils Thursday exterior the governor’s mansion in Oklahoma City and the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
