Man convicted of raping two Michigan teenagers to be executed in Oklahoma

A man convicted of raping two Michigan teenagers is set to be executed in Oklahoma.

The Associated Press reported that all appeals against 66-year-old Richard Rojem have been exhausted and he is scheduled to receive a lethal injection with three different drugs on Thursday at the Oklahoma State Prison in McAlester.

A Washita County jury convicted Rojem in 1985 after his former stepdaughter, seven-year-old Layla Cummings, was found mutilated and partially clothed in a field near Burns Flat.

According to the Associated Press, she had been stabbed to death. Prosecutors based their case on fingerprints and a condom wrapper found near the girl’s body.

Rojem had previously been convicted of raping two teenagers in Michigan.

“For many years, the shock of her loss and the knowledge of the sheer fear, pain and suffering she endured at the hands of that soulless monster was more than I could imagine surviving day to day,” Layla’s mother, Mindy Lynn Cummings, wrote to the parole board.

Oklahoma has executed more prisoners per capita than any other U.S. state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Since lethal injections resumed in October 2021, 12 executions have been carried out there. Previously, there was a nearly six-year hiatus following problems with executions in 2014 and 2015.