Richard Rojem Jr., 66, was executed in Oklahoma for the murder, kidnapping and rape of his former stepdaughter Layla Cummings in July 1984.
In Oklahoma, death row inmate Richard Rojem Jr. was executed by lethal injection on Thursday morning. He is the second inmate sentenced to death in the state this year and the ninth in the country.
Rojem, 66, was pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m. He had not requested a last-minute postponement.
This was the second execution in the USA within a few days. On Wednesday evening, Ramiro Gonzales was executed in Texas after being convicted of the rape and murder of an 18-year-old girl.
Rojem was convicted in 1985 of raping, kidnapping and murdering his former stepdaughter, Layla Dawn Cummings, after he left the 7-year-old’s body in a plowed field, according to Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals records. Rojem had been divorced from Layla Dawn Cummings, her mother, for two months before the murder, court records further show.
Layla’s body was found in a ploughed field by a Burns Flat farmer on the morning of July 7, 1984, appeals court records say. The girl had stab wounds and was wearing her mother’s nightgown when the farmer found her, documents say.
Rojem has maintained his innocence for decades, including at his most recent pardon hearing on June 17.
“I did not kidnap Layla. I did not rape Layla. And I did not murder Layla,” Rojem said during his pardon hearing before the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Parole.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond issued the following statement following Rojem’s execution:
“This morning, justice was finally served for Layla Cummings when the monster responsible for her rape and murder was executed. Layla’s family has endured unimaginable suffering for nearly 40 years. I pray that today’s act brings some sense of comfort to those who loved her.”
Richard Rojem’s last meal
According to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Rojem’s last meal consisted of a small Little Caesars pizza, eight packets of salt, eight packets of crushed red pepper, a bottle of ginger ale, two tubs of vanilla ice cream, and a large Styrofoam cup.
Richard Rojem executed for murder of his former stepdaughter
In 1984, Rojem, then 26, kidnapped Layla “sometime between 10 p.m. on the evening of July 6 and 1:15 a.m. on the morning of July 7” from an apartment in Elk City, Oklahoma, where she lived with her 9-year-old brother and mother, according to appeals court records.
Mindy Cummings had left her two children home alone to work a late shift at a local fast-food restaurant, court documents say. Rojem and Cummings met while he was serving time in a Michigan prison for the rape of two teenagers, court documents say. Cummings was the sister of Rojem’s cellmate.
Appeals court documents say Rojem knew Cummings’ work hours from conversations with family members and knew that the lock to the family’s apartment was not working properly.
After Rojem was found guilty in 1985, a judge sentenced him to death for Layla’s murder and 1,000 years in prison each for the rape and kidnapping.
Richard Rojem has exhausted all appeals and rejected a request for clemency
Rojem was successful in having his death sentences overturned in 2001 and 2006. However, in 2007, a jury again voted for the death penalty, according to the appeals court’s complaint.
In 2017, Rojem had exhausted all appeals, making the June 17 pardon hearing his last chance to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“I was not a good person in the first half of my life, I don’t deny that,” said Rojem, handcuffed, during the hearing. “But I went to prison. I learned my lesson and put it all behind me.”
Despite pleas from Rojem and his attorney Jack Fisher, the parole board denied clemency. The decision was made in part because of comments from Layla’s mother, Mindy Cummings, and her aunt, Vicky Cummings.
“I’m tired of pushing against the prison door all these years trying to keep him in,” Vicky Cummings, who joined via Zoom, said during the hearing. “Having to relive and repeat this horror over and over again.”
Mindy Cummings did not attend the hearing, but instead wrote a letter that was presented to the board.
“Everything she could have been was taken from her in one terrible night,” Cummings wrote of her daughter. “She never became more than the wonderful seven-year-old she was. And so she remains in our hearts – forever 7.”
When is the next scheduled execution?
The next execution in the USA is scheduled for July 16 in Texas. The man sentenced to death is 47-year-old Ruben Gutierrez.
Gutierrez, who was a 21-year-old forklift driver at the time of his crimes, was convicted of murder. He and his two co-defendants, Rene Garcia and Pedro Garza, entered the home of an 85-year-old woman on Sept. 5, 1988, repeatedly beat her and stabbed her multiple times in the head, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Gutierrez and his co-defendants fled the woman’s home with at least $56,000, the ministry said.
Gutierrez’s execution was originally scheduled for June 16, 2020. However, the then 43-year-old was granted a stay an hour and 10 minutes before the execution so that a lower court could consider his request for a chaplain to be present in the courtroom, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Gutierrez’s legal team filed a motion for post-conviction DNA testing in 2022, but their attempt was unsuccessful.
