Alabama on Thursday executed a man who admitted killing five people with an ax and a gun during a drug-fueled rampage in 2016, dropping an appeal to allow lethal injection.
Derrick Dearman, 36, was pronounced dead at Holman Correctional Facility in southern Alabama at 6:14 p.m. Thursday. He pleaded guilty to assault that began when he broke into the home where his estranged girlfriend was taking shelter.
Dearman withdrew his appeal this year. “I am guilty,” he wrote in a letter to the judge in April, adding: “It is unfair to the victims and their families to continue to postpone the justice they deserve.”
“I'm willing to do everything I can to repay a small portion of the debt I owe society for all the terrible things I've done,” Dearman said in an audio recording sent to The Associated Press this week. I plan to dedicate it to him.” “From now on, instead of focusing on me, I want you to focus on healing all the people I've hurt.”
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Dearman's execution was one of two planned in the U.S. on Thursday, in which Robert Roberson lost his 2-year-old daughter in 2002, a murder linked to a shaken baby syndrome diagnosis. His conviction was scheduled to be the first death penalty in the United States. But a judge granted Texas lawmakers' request for a delay. his execution. The Texas Attorney General's Office was expected to immediately appeal the judge's order.
Dearman's execution was Alabama's fifth in 2024. Nitrogen gas. The remaining two cases involved lethal injection, which remains the state's primary method.
Shannon Melissa Randall, 35, was murdered on August 20, 2016, at a home near Citronelle, about 30 miles north of Mobile. Joseph Adam Turner, 26 years old. Robert Lee Brown, 26 years old. Justin Caleb Reed, 23 years old. and Chelsea Marie Reed, 22 years old.
This undated photo taken by the Alabama Department of Corrections shows Derrick Dearman, who is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Alabama on October 17, 2024. (Alabama Department of Corrections, Associated Press)
Chelsea Reed, who was married to Justin Reed, was pregnant at the time of his murder. Turner was married to Randall and shared a home with the Reed family. Randall's younger brother, Brown, was also staying there the night of the murder. Dearman's girlfriend survived. Turner and Randall were with their 3-month-old son at the time of the attack, but the baby was unharmed.
According to the judge's sentencing order, the day before the murder, Dearman's girlfriend's brother, Joseph Turner, brought her to his home because Dearman had become abusive towards her.
Dearman showed up at the house multiple times that night to see his girlfriend, but was told he couldn't be there. He returned shortly after 3 a.m., when all the victims were asleep, according to the judge's sentencing order. Prosecutors said the man went through the house and attacked the victim with an ax he had retrieved from the yard, then attacked the victim with a gun that was in the house. He forced his surviving girlfriend to get in the car with him and drive to Mississippi.
According to a judge's 2018 sentencing order, Dearman turned himself in to authorities at his father's request.
As he was taken to prison, Dearman claimed that drugs were the cause of the assault, telling reporters: High intake of methamphetamine When he entered the house, he said, “the drugs were making me think things were happening that weren't actually happening.”
Dearman initially pleaded not guilty, but changed his plea to guilty after firing his lawyer. Because the case was a capital murder case, Alabama law required a jury to hear the evidence and decide whether the state had proven its case. The jury found Dearman guilty and unanimously recommended the death penalty.
Before Mr. Dearman withdrew his appeal, his lawyers argued that the defense had not done enough to prove Mr. Dearman's mental illness and “lack of capacity to plead guilty.” The Equal Justice Initiative, which represented Mr. Dearman in his appeal, said on its website Wednesday that Mr. Dearman “suffered from a lifelong severe mental illness, including bipolar disorder with psychotic features.” .
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Dearman had been on death row since 2018.
Hours before his execution by lethal injection, Dearman met with his sons, sister and father. For his final meal, he ate a seafood platter brought in from a local restaurant.
