Alabama on Thursday executed a man who admitted to killing five people with an ax and a pistol during a 2016 drug-fueled rampage and dropped his appeals to allow his lethal injection to continue.
Derrick Dearman, 36, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m. Thursday at Holman Prison in south Alabama. He pleaded guilty during a rampage that began when he broke into the house where his ex-girlfriend was sheltering.
Dearman had dropped his appeals this year. “I am guilty,” he wrote in a letter to a judge in April, adding that “it is not fair to the victims or their families to continue to prolong the justice they so rightly deserve title”.
“I gladly give whatever I can to try to repay a small part of my debt to society for all the terrible things I’ve done,” Dearman said in an audio recording sent this week to The Associated Press. “From now on, I hope the focus won’t be on me, but rather on healing everyone I’ve hurt.”
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Thursday the execution was “in the interest of justice and finality for the families.”
“As a jury of his peers unanimously agreed, the horrific facts of this case deserved the ultimate punishment,” Marshall said. “Dearman viciously struck his victims with an axe, leaving them conscious and in pain for a time before executing each at point-blank range. Dearman showed no mercy or mercy.”
Alabama Department of Corrections via AP
Dearman’s execution was one of two planned for Thursday in the United States. Robert Roberson was to be the nation’s first person put to death for a murder conviction linked to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, in the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter. but a judge granted Texas lawmakers’ request to delay Robert Roberson’s execution. The judge’s order is expected to be quickly appealed by the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
Dearman was the fifth execution in Alabama in 2024. Two were carried out using nitrogen gas. The other two were carried out by lethal injection, which remains the primary method used by the state.
Killed Aug. 20, 2016, at the home near Citronelle, about 30 miles north of Mobile, were Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; and Chelsea Marie Reed, 22.
Chelsea Reed, married to Justin Reed, was pregnant when she was killed. Turner, who was married to Randall, shared the house with the Reeds. Brown, who was Randall’s brother, was also staying there the night of the murders. Dearman’s girlfriend survived. Turner and Randall were with their 3-month-old son when they were attacked, but the baby was unharmed.
The day before the killing, Joseph Turner, the brother of Dearman’s girlfriend, brought her to their home after Dearman became violent toward her, according to a judge’s sentencing order.
Dearman had shown up at the house several times that night asking to see his girlfriend and was told he couldn’t stay there. Shortly after 3 a.m., he returned while all the victims were asleep, according to the judge’s sentencing order. He made his way through the house, attacking the victims with an ax taken from the yard and then with a gun found in the house, prosecutors said. He forced his girlfriend, who survived, to get in the car with him and drive to Mississippi.
Dearman surrendered to authorities at the request of his father, according to a judge’s 2018 sentencing order.
As he was escorted to jail, Dearman blamed the rampage on drugs, telling reporters that he was high on meth when he entered the house and that “drugs made me think about things that didn’t really exist.
Dearman initially pleaded not guilty, but changed his plea to guilty after firing his lawyers. Since it was a capital murder case, Alabama law required a jury to hear the evidence and determine whether the state had proven the case. The jury found Dearman guilty and unanimously recommended the death penalty.
Before he dropped his appeal, Dearman’s attorneys argued that his attorney had not done enough to demonstrate Dearman’s mental illness and his “lack of competence to plead guilty.” The Equal Justice Initiative, which represented Dearman in the appeal, wrote on its website Wednesday that Dearman “suffered throughout his life from serious mental illness, including bipolar disorder with psychotic features.”
Dearman had been on death row since 2018.
In the hours before his execution by lethal injection, Dearman was visited by his sons, his sister and his father. For his last meal, he had a seafood platter brought from a local restaurant.
