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Alabama inmate Derrick Dearman was executed for the murder of five family members

Posted on by Vanessa
Alabama inmate Derrick Dearman was executed for the murder of five family members

Dearman was executed Thursday evening, eight years after he murdered five people, including a pregnant woman. Dearman said in some of his final words that he hoped the victims' family could now heal.

Alabama executed Derrick Dearman on Thursday, eight years after he massacred five of his girlfriend's family members with an ax and a gun in the middle of the night.

Dearman, 36, was convicted of murdering his girlfriend's brother, Joseph Turner; Turner's wife, Shannon Randall; Randall's brother Robert Brown; and Randall's niece Chelsea Reed, Reed's husband Justin and the couple's unborn baby in a drug-related rampage the night of August 20, 2016, in the Mobile suburb of Citronelle.

Dearman's time of death was 6:14 p.m. CT. The execution began promptly just before 6 p.m. CT and Dearman began losing consciousness within minutes, according to Marty Roney, an execution witness and reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Dearman, who had been on death row since 2018, wrote a series of letters to state officials, including Attorney General Steve Marshall, informing them that he was dropping his appeals, firing his appellate attorneys and demanding that his death sentence be carried out so that the victims and he believes their families can get the justice they deserve.

An execution date was set six months later.

“I willingly give everything I can to try to repay a small part of my debt to society for the terrible things I have done,” Dearman said in a statement Monday. “From this point on, I hope so. The focus will not be on me, but on healing all the people I have hurt.”

Dearman was the fifth inmate executed in Alabama this year and the 20th nationwide. He was also executed on the same day that Texas planned to execute Robert Leslie Roberson, despite evidence that he had been wrongfully convicted in the death of his toddler.

A family member hopes the execution will come with closure

Bryant Randall, Chelsea Reed's father and brother of Shannon Randall and Robert Brown, isn't entirely sure whether Dearman's execution will bring closure, but he “hopes it will.”

“I have struggled for years to find forgiveness for what he did. But I hope this leads to some sort of closure,” Randall told USA TODAY. “But knowing he wants this now, it kind of feels like he’s taking the easy way out now. “I have to live every day with the thought that my family is not here, but I wish he had to live a miserable life in prison and think about everything he has sacrificed by making bad decisions.”

Randall says justice will be served “to the best of the laws of our land,” but says Dearman's justice will be done “with God Almighty.”

Two of those killed were a couple who had a three-month-old baby, two were high school friends pregnant with their first child, and another was a caring brother.

“Family and friends were important to my family,” Randall said. “Worldly possessions didn’t play a big role in their lives, but family meant everything to them.”

He wants people to think of his family “before this tragic event.”

“It is human nature to remember what happened to them when they died,” he said. “But each of them loved family and friends and enjoyed the simple things in life.”

Randall was one of many family members who attended Dearman's execution.

What was Derrick Dearman convicted of?

An Alabama jury found Dearman guilty and unanimously recommended a death sentence in 2018 for the murders of all five family members.

Dearman, who had a history of drug abuse, went on a drug-fueled rampage through the house, killing each victim individually with an ax he found in a tree and two guns, hours after he was repeatedly asked to leave the house.

Dearman also kidnapped his girlfriend Laneta Lester and Randall's child after the murders, making several stops before reaching his father's home in Mississippi. He later turned himself in while Lester fled with the infant.

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