Richard Rojem Jr. had 20 minutes to address the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board. Wearing a maroon prison uniform, he raised his cuffed right hand and swore to tell the truth, then gave his pitch for why his life should be spared. It would take less than 90 seconds.
“This hearing didn’t have to take place,” he began. Prosecutors had offered a plea deal right up until the day of his 1985 trial; if he’d admitted to abducting, raping, and murdering his young stepdaughter, Layla Cummings, Rojem could have avoided a death sentence. But he refused: “An innocent man doesn’t ever plead guilty to a crime he hasn’t committed.”
Rojem spoke via video link from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. It was June 17, and his execution was 10 days away. At 66, he’d been on death row for virtually his whole adult life. He’d survived for so long in part because appellate courts had deemed his original trial to be unfair, upholding his conviction but twice overturning his death sentence. Meanwhile, fingernail scrapings taken from Cummings revealed an unknown male DNA profile and nothing from Rojem. This was potentially powerful exculpatory evidence. But a third jury, unaware of the DNA testing, resentenced him to die.
Cummings was only 7 years old when she vanished from her mother’s small apartment overnight in the small town of Elk City, located on the border of Western Oklahoma. After a 10-hour search, her body was discovered in a wheat field in an adjacent county on July 7, 1984. Her underwear was stuffed in her mouth, and she had been stabbed to death. Rojem, who had recently divorced Cummings’s mother, quickly became the prime suspect. He had previously been accused of molesting the child, which he denied. Prosecutors said he’d brutally assaulted and killed Cummings out of revenge.
Forty years later, Rojem had no illusions of mercy. He’d seen 124 people escorted to the death chamber. Some had received clemency recommendations only to be rebuffed by the governor, who gets the final say. Since resuming executions in 2021, Gov. Kevin Stitt has overseen the killing of 12 people. He has rejected clemency recommendations from the board three times. Amid overwhelming public pressure, he commuted a single death sentence to life in prison: that of Julius Jones, whose case became a cause célèbre.
Unlike Jones, Rojem is virtually unknown outside Oklahoma. He believes it is due to the nature of the crime. “Nobody wants to talk about it, nobody wants to get involved, nobody wants to seriously help a guy like me because nobody wants to risk lending their credibility to helping a guy with a case like this and be wrong,” Rojem wrote in a message to anti-death penalty activists last year. Although a handful of supporters submitted letters to the board, no one spoke on his behalf at the hearing apart from Rojem’s longtime attorneys.
The hearing lasted two hours. Rojem’s attorneys argued that the case against him had been thin from the start. “I think it would be a travesty to execute him based on the evidence presented in this case,” veteran death penalty attorney Jack Fisher told the board. The state, led by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, rejected that characterization of the evidence while stressing one of the most damning strikes against Rojem. “While our focus here today is on Layla Cummings,” Drummond said, “past is prologue. In 1978, Mr. Rojem raped two girls in Michigan. The evidence was overwhelming. He even pled guilty to one of the charges. But he’s never accepted responsibility. He’s never said he’s sorry.”
Rojem did not claim to be innocent of these crimes. “I wasn’t a good human being for the first part of my life,” he told the board. “And I don’t deny that. But I went to prison. I learned my lesson. And I left all that behind. … My understanding is that this hearing is to decide my fate on only the case before us and nothing else. I did not kidnap Layla. I did not rape Layla. And I did not murder Layla.”
It took just a few minutes for the board to make its decision. The votes were unanimous: five votes to deny clemency. The June 27 execution would move forward.
Photo: Sue Ogrocki/AP
An Insufficient Defense
If Rojem dies by lethal injection on Thursday, Drummond will almost certainly be in the front row. The attorney general has made it a point to attend each execution carried out on his watch, even as he has fought to slow down the state’s once-frenzied killing schedule, citing the burden on prison staff. Some of his maneuvering has undoubtedly been political: Drummond is widely understood to be planning a gubernatorial run in 2026, and his willingness to disrupt the state’s death penalty system has already cost him. He has especially enraged Oklahoma’s elected district attorneys by going out of his way to save the life of Richard Glossip, most recently filing a brief in his favor before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Drummond’s concern over Glossip’s innocence claim has not extended to others on death row. The same has often been true of people who have been outspoken about the state’s system as a whole. State Rep. Kevin McDugle has criticized Oklahoma’s handling of cases that are later overturned, but he maintains his support for the death penalty in cases involving sex crimes against children. He believes that those who commit heinous acts against children, such as raping and killing them, should be executed immediately.
Despite the revulsion towards crimes against children, there are concerns about overlooking potential issues in cases like Rojem’s. While prosecutors argue that his conviction has been upheld in state and federal courts, there are significant problems in the case that have not been thoroughly examined. Procedural barriers in Oklahoma, as well as in the rest of the country, make it difficult to revisit evidence in death penalty cases. In Rojem’s case, there were issues that were overlooked by appellate courts and were not discussed during the clemency hearing. Additionally, the defense did not have the opportunity to present all the evidence that could have challenged the state’s theory of the crime.
Rojem’s defense attorneys, who were appointed by the court, lacked the experience and resources necessary to effectively represent him. The limitations on their pay and the denial of funds for investigators or experts hindered their ability to properly investigate the case. The lack of thorough investigation was particularly concerning given that law enforcement had focused on Rojem early in the investigation, despite leads that suggested otherwise.
The circumstances of how Rojem became a suspect are also troubling. A 1985 article portrayed him as a scapegoat due to Michigan’s parole system. His relationship with Cummings’s mother, his arrest for drunk driving, and the circumstantial evidence presented at trial were used to build a case against him. Despite testimonies from those who knew him well attesting to his character, Rojem was convicted based on the evidence presented.
The lack of funding for a proper investigation into Rojem’s case, combined with the rush to find a suspect, raises questions about the fairness of his trial and conviction. There was no expert witness available to challenge the state’s key forensic evidence in Rojem’s case. This evidence included a damaged plastic cup found in the parking lot of the Cummings’ apartment, allegedly originating from a bar where Rojem was seen the night of the murder. A partial fingerprint found inside the cup, despite being of poor quality, was matched to Rojem, which the prosecutor emphasized as strong evidence. Additionally, numerous hairs found on Cummings’s body were not linked to Rojem, raising suspicions of deliberate planting to mislead investigators.
Rojem’s lead attorney suggested that his client was made a scapegoat due to his criminal history in Michigan. Despite being on death row for nearly 15 years, Rojem’s death sentence was overturned by a federal district court due to violations of his constitutional rights during the trial. A resentencing trial revealed DNA evidence excluding Rojem from the crime, but he was still sentenced to death.
Subsequent appeals highlighted issues with biased jurors and the failure to present mitigating evidence in Rojem’s favor. The third sentencing trial in 2007 presented positive witnesses for Rojem but failed to introduce crucial DNA evidence and evidence of childhood trauma that could have influenced the jury’s decision.
Rojem’s attorneys attempted to challenge the forensic evidence’s validity, particularly fingerprint analysis, which has been called into question in recent years. However, the legal system’s reliance on such practices made it difficult to sway the Pardon and Parole Board. Despite efforts to emphasize the weaknesses in the case against Rojem, including outdated forensic practices, the victim’s family’s strong representation overshadowed these arguments during the hearing.
“Rojem’s depravity for 40 years,” she said. “Layla and Don have both gone on and I have grown old. Nevertheless, it is my hope that through me you will see their suffering.”
Rojem’s attorneys did not respond to interview requests from The Intercept. Many of those who were involved in the original trial are now deceased, including his defense lawyers. Suttle, the original prosecutor, died earlier this year. In a phone message responding to a request for an interview, his widow said it was “a damn shame because he would have been gratified to see the completion of his case.”
Three days after the clemency hearing, Rojem was moved to death watch, the prison cell where he will stay until he is escorted to the execution chamber. In a message to an advocate, he said he was grateful to have had a chance to say his goodbyes. “I’ll neither confirm/deny the presence of mistiness in the ocular region,” he wrote, adding a smiley face.
Rojem’s advocates don’t claim to know the truth of his guilt or innocence. But they insist that his life has value regardless. Most of them call him Daiji, his Buddhist name, and describe him as more concerned with their well-being than his own. In my own brief correspondence with Rojem last year, he seemed at peace with his circumstances, joking wryly about his lack of confidence that state officials would be able to carry out so many executions without messing up. He described a lunch tray that had consisted of instant rice, improperly prepared: “So, if you can’t follow the instructions on the instant rice bag…”
He wrote about a former cellmate who had recently been executed. Rojem considered him to be a good, decent man even though he was regarded as a monster by the rest of the world. He knew this was how he was seen, too. “I’ve lost many friends since 1985.”
