Oklahoma's next execution set for June 27 after ruling from Court of Appeals

OKLAHOMA CITY — The state of Oklahoma has set an execution date for a man convicted of murdering a 7-year-old girl in the 1980s.

The Court of Criminal Appeals decided that Richard Rojem will be put to death after decades behind bars for the murder of Layla Dawn Cummings.

Rojem has always claimed that he's innocent.

In 1984, a farmer found Dawn's body in a field on the side of a county road in Burns Flat. Rojem, who was the 7-year-old's stepfather, was convicted of her murder but is just now set for execution.

He has won two challenges to his sentence in decades past. Court records say Cummings was abducted from an apartment in Elk City while her mother was working.

After several resentencing trials, juries kept recommending the death penalty. That recommendation was upheld by the Court of Criminal Appeals.

It's the first execution the state of Oklahoma will carry out since the appeals court decided on 90-day intervals between executions earlier this month.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections and Attorney General Gentner Drummond both pushed for that new interval. In court filings on the decision, however, a judge said he thinks it's delaying justice.

The judge said, in part, "It's time to realize the victims and their families must be remembered, and the law established by the Oklahoma Legislature followed. Regardless of how a person feels about the death penalty, it is a part of a law established by the legislature."

Rojem's execution date is scheduled for June 27 at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Source: koco.com, Jason Burger, May 18, 2024

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