This undated Alabama Department of Corrections photo shows Derrick Dearman, who was to be executed by lethal injection on October 17, 2024 in Alabama. Photo Credit: AP
Alabama is preparing to execute a man who admitted killing five people with an ax and a gun during a 2016 drug-fueled rampage and dropped his appeal, so his death sentence will be commuted. Should be taken forward.
Derrick Dearman, 36, will be executed by lethal injection at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in south Alabama on Thursday at 6 p.m.
Also read: Justice Department says death penalty will resume in US
Dearman pleaded guilty in 2016 to killing five people after breaking into a home where his ex-girlfriend had taken refuge. Dearman had his appeals dismissed this spring so his execution could proceed. “I plead guilty,” he wrote in an April letter to a judge, adding, “It is not fair to the victims or their families to continue to delay the justice they deserve.”
“I’m voluntarily giving everything I can and trying to repay a small part of my debt to society for all the terrible things they’ve done,” Dearman said in an audio recording sent this week. I can.” The Associated Press. “From this point forward, I hope the focus will not be on me, but on the healing of all the people I have hurt.”
Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Justin Caleb Reed, 23; and Chelsea Marie Reed, 22, were murdered on August 20, 2016, at home near Citronelle, about 33 miles (53 km) north of Mobile. All the victims were relatives.
One of the victims, Chelsea Reed, who was married to Justin Reed, was pregnant when she was murdered. They planned to name the boy Aiden Caleb, according to his obituary. Turner, who was married to Randall, shared the home with the Reeds. Brown, who was Randall’s brother, also stayed there the night of the murder.
The day before the murder, Joseph Turner, the brother of Dearman’s girlfriend, brought her to his home after Dearman became abusive toward him, according to the judge’s sentencing order.
Dearman came to the house several times that night to visit his girlfriend and was told he could not stay there. According to the judge’s sentencing order, he returned home sometime after 3 a.m. when all the victims were sleeping. Prosecutors said he worked his way into the house, attacked the victims with an ax taken from the yard and then attacked them with a gun found in the house. He forced his girlfriend, who survived, to get into the car with him and drive to Mississippi.
According to the judge’s 2018 sentencing order, Dearman surrendered to authorities at the request of his father.
As he was taken to jail, Dearman attributed the heightened effects to drugs, telling reporters that when he went to the house he had consumed methamphetamine and “the drugs make me think about those things.” “Which were not actually happening.”
Dearman initially pleaded not guilty but changed his plea to guilty after firing his lawyers. Because this 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.
Dearman has been on death row since 2018.
This is Alabama’s fifth scheduled execution this year. The two state executions were carried out by nitrogen. The other two were executed by lethal injection, which remains the state’s primary execution method.
published – October 17, 2024 12:19 PM IST