66-year-old Richard Rojem was executed at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester via lethal injection on Thursday. His time of death was 10:16 a.m.
Rojem was convicted of the 1984 kidnapping, rape, and murder of his former stepdaughter, Layla Cummings. Rojem had been sentenced to death for the murder three separate times — his first two convictions were thrown out due to trial errors, but he was given the death penalty for the third time by a Custer County jury in 2007.
This was the state’s second execution of 2024, following the execution of Michael DeWayne Smith in April. There are no more executions scheduled for this year, and moving forward they will be scheduled with 90 day intervals.
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