A man accused of kidnapping, raping and murdering his seven-year-old stepdaughter in 1984 is expected to be executed this Thursday in the US state of Oklahoma, after his request for clemency was rejected at the beginning of the year. month.
Richard Rojem, 66, has exhausted all legal remedies available to him and is scheduled to receive a lethal injection of three drugs at Oklahoma State Prison in McAlester, the Associated Press reported.
Earlier this month, the man denied being responsible for the murder of his former stepdaughter, Layla Cummings, whose mutilated and partially clothed body was found with stab wounds in a field near Burns Flat.
“I wasn’t a good human being in the first part of my life and I don’t deny that. But I went to prison. I learned my lesson and left all that behind,” he said during the hearing.
However, the request was unanimously denied, with Rojem’s lawyer, Jack Fisher, realizing that his client had no further pending appeals that could prevent or delay its execution.
The man had already been convicted of raping two teenagers in Michigan, with prosecutors claiming that he was angry with his stepdaughter because the girl said he sexually abused her, statements that dictated his divorce with the minor’s mother and his return to prison. .
The defense lawyer argued, in turn, that the DNA evidence taken from the child’s fingernails did not link his client to the crime, and appealed for his sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment without parole.
Prosecutors pointed out that there was other evidence of Rojem’s responsibility in addition to DNA, including a fingerprint discovered outside the girl’s apartment in a glass from a bar that the man left shortly before the minor’s abduction. A box of condoms was also found and was linked to a used condom that was in the man’s room.
Rojem was convicted of the crime in 1985, after just 45 minutes of deliberations, in Washita County. The man had two death sentences overturned due to legal errors but, in 2007, he was convicted again, in Custer County.
Leave a Reply