Oklahoma's Pardon and Parole Board is denying clemency for Rojem, convicted of raping and eliminating a 7-year-old girl in 1984. Monday's 5-0 choice paves the way for 66-year-old Richard Rojem to be executed by deadly injection on June 27, 2024.
Richard Rojem, 66, has actually tired his appeals and is arranged to receive a three-drug deadly injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
During a clemency hearing previously this month, Rojem rejected duty for killing his former stepdaughter, Layla Cummings. The kid's mutilated and partly clothed body was discovered in a field in western Oklahoma near the town of Burns Flat. She had been stabbed to death.
" I wasn't a good human being for the very first part of my life, and I do not reject that," stated Rojem, handcuffed and wearing a red jail uniform, when he appeared via a video link from jail before the state's Pardon and Parole Board. "But I went to jail. I learned my lesson and I left all that behind.".
The board all rejected Rojem's quote for grace. Rojem's lawyer, Jack Fisher, stated there are no pending appeals that would halt his execution.
Rojem was previously convicted of raping two teenage girls in Michigan and district attorneys declare he was angry at Layla Cummings due to the fact that she reported that he sexually abused her, causing his divorce from the lady's mother and his go back to jail for breaching his parole.
" For many years, the shock of losing her and the knowledge of the large horror, pain and suffering that she endured at the hands of this soulless monster was more than I might fathom how to survive everyday," Layla's mom, Mindy Lynn Cummings, wrote to the parole board.
Rojem's lawyers argued that DNA proof taken from the lady's fingernails did not connect him to the criminal activity and urged the clemency board to recommend his life be spared and that his sentence be travelled to life in prison without parole.
" If my customer's DNA is not present, he must not be convicted," Fisher said.
District attorneys say a lot of evidence other than DNA was used to convict Rojem, consisting of a finger print that was discovered outside the woman's apartment or condo on a cup from a bar Rojem left right before the woman was abducted. A prophylactic wrapper found near the lady's body also was linked to an utilized prophylactic found in Rojem's bed room, district attorneys stated.
A Washita County jury convicted Rojem in 1985 after just 45 minutes of considerations. His previous death sentences were twice overturned by appellate courts due to the fact that of trial errors. A Custer County jury ultimately handed him his 3rd death sentence in 2007.
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Oklahoma, which has actually carried out more prisoners per capita than any other state in the nation because the death penalty was restored in 1976, has carried out 12 executions since resuming deadly injections in October 2021 following a nearly six-year hiatus arising from issues with executions in 2014 and 2015.
Death penalty challengers planned to hold vigils Thursday outside the guv's mansion in
Oklahoma City and the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
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