XPost: talk.rape, ok.general, or.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
   From: addison12@gmx.net   
      
   Oklahoma executed a man Thursday who was convicted of kidnapping, raping   
   and killing his former stepdaughter, 7-year-old Layla Cummings, in 1984.   
      
   Richard Rojem, 66, had exhausted his appeals and received a three-drug   
   lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Rojem   
   had been in prison since 1985 and was the longest-serving inmate on   
   Oklahoma's death row.   
      
   When asked if he had any last words, Rojem, who was strapped to a gurney   
   and had an IV in his tattooed left arm, said: "I don't. I've said my   
   goodbyes."   
      
   The execution started at 10:03 a.m., state Department of Corrections   
   Director Steven Harpe said in a statement. Rojem looked briefly toward   
   several witnesses who were inside a room next to the death chamber before   
   the first drug, the sedative midazolam, began to flow. A spiritual adviser   
   was in the death chamber with Rojem during the execution.   
      
   Rojem was declared unconscious at 10:08 a.m., Harpe said. He was declared   
   dead at 10:16 a.m.   
      
   "Justice for Layla Cummings was finally served this morning with the   
   execution of the monster responsible for her rape and murder," state   
   Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement after the execution.   
   "Layla's family has endured unimaginable suffering for almost 40 years. My   
   prayer is that today's action brings a sense of comfort to those who loved   
   her."   
      
   Harpe said Rojem was served his last meal Wednesday at 5:48 p.m., which   
   included a small Little Caesars pizza with double cheese and double   
   pepperoni, a ginger ale and two vanilla ice cream cups.   
      
   During a clemency hearing earlier this month, Rojem denied responsibility   
   for killing the girl. The child's mutilated and partially 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 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 were no pending appeals that would have halted his   
   execution.   
      
   Rojem was previously convicted of raping two teenage girls in Michigan and   
   prosecutors allege he was angry at Layla Cummings because she reported   
   that he sexually abused her, leading to his divorce from the girl's mother   
   and his return to prison for violating his parole.   
      
   "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.   
      
   Before the execution, Drummond said Rojem was a "real-life monster who   
   deserves the same absence of mercy he showed to the child he savagely   
   murdered," CBS Oklahoma City affiliate KWTV reports.   
      
   Rojem's attorneys argued that DNA evidence taken from the girl's   
   fingernails did not link him to the crime and urged the clemency board to   
   recommend his life be spared and that his sentence be commuted to life in   
   prison without parole.   
      
   "If my client's DNA is not present, he should not be convicted," Fisher   
   said.   
      
   Prosecutors say plenty of evidence other than DNA was used 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.   
      
   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.   
      
   With the execution of Rojem on Thursday, Oklahoma, which has executed more   
   inmates per capita than any other state in the nation since the death   
   penalty was reinstated in 1976, has now carried out 13 executions since   
   resuming lethal injections in October 2021 following a nearly six-year   
   hiatus resulting from problems with executions in 2014 and 2015.   
      
   Death penalty opponents planned to hold vigils Thursday outside the   
   governor's mansion in Oklahoma City and the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in   
   McAlester.   
      
   https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oklahoma-execute-richard-rojem-kidnap-rape-   
   murder-ex-stepdaughter-7-layla-cummings/   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)