Alabama executes Derrick Dearman, a man who killed five people and asked to be executed

A man who admitted to killing five people with an ax and a gun during a murder was executed in Alabama on Thursday drug-related shooting spree in 2016 and dropped his appeals to move forward with his lethal injection.

Derrick Dearman, 36, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m. Thursday at Holman Prison in southern Alabama. He pleaded guilty in a crime spree that began when he broke into the home where his estranged girlfriend had taken refuge.

Dearman dropped his appeals earlier 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 further delay the justice they so rightly deserve.”

“I willingly give everything I can to repay a small part of my debt to society for all the terrible things I have done,” Dearman said in an audio recording sent to The Associated Press this week. “From now on, I hope the focus is not on me, but on healing everyone I hurt.”

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Thursday the execution was “in the interest of justice and finality for the families.”

“A jury of his peers unanimously agreed that the horrific facts of this case merited the highest sentence,” Marshall said. “Dearman brutally beat his victims with an ax, leaving them conscious and suffering for some time before he executed each one at close range. Dearman showed no compassion and no mercy.”

Dearman's execution was one of two scheduled Thursday in the United States. Robert Roberson would be the first person in the country to be executed for murder related to the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, for the death of his two-year-old daughter in 2002. but a judge Granted a request from the Texas legislature to postpone the execution of Robert Roberson. The Texas Attorney General's Office was expected to quickly appeal the judge's order.

Dearman's execution was Alabama's fifth execution of 2024. Two were carried out using nitrogen gas. The other two involved lethal injection, which remains the state's primary method.

Killed on Aug. 20, 2016, at the home near Citronelle, about 30 miles north of Mobile: Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Justin Caleb Reed, 23; and Chelsea Marie Reed, 22.

Chelsea Reed, who was married to Justin Reed, was pregnant when she was killed. Turner, who was married to Randall, shared the house with the Reeds. Brown, Randall's brother, was also living there the night of the murder. Dearman's girlfriend survived. Turner and Randall had their three-month-old son with them when they were attacked, but the baby was unharmed.

The day before the murder, Joseph Turner, the brother of Dearman's girlfriend, took her to his home after Dearman was abusive toward her, according to a judge's ruling.

Dearman had shown up at the house several times that evening, asking to see his girlfriend, and was told he couldn't stay there. According to the judge's ruling, he returned sometime after 3 a.m. when all the victims were asleep. He made his way through the house and attacked the victims with an ax he took from the yard and then with a gun he found in the house, prosecutors said. 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.

When he was taken to prison, Dearman blamed the rampage on drugs, telling reporters that he was high on methamphetamine when he started at the house and that “the drugs made me think things were happening that weren't really there.”

Dearman initially pleaded not guilty, but changed his plea to guilty after firing his lawyers. Because it was a murder case, Alabama law required a jury to hear the evidence and determine whether the state proved the case. The jury found Dearman guilty and unanimously recommended the death penalty.

Before he withdrew his appeal, Dearman's lawyers argued that his trial attorney had not done enough to establish Dearman's mental illness and “lack of competency to plead guilty.” The Equal Justice Initiative, which represented Dearman in the appeal, wrote on its website Wednesday that Dearman “suffered from a lifelong and 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. His last meal was a seafood platter that he brought from a local restaurant.