A convicted ax murderer who killed five people will be executed by lethal injection in Alabama — the fifth prisoner to be put to death in the state this year, the governor announced on Tuesday.
Derrick Dearman, 35, was convicted in the savage slaying of five friends and family members of his then-girlfriend — including a pregnant woman and her unborn child — in a meth-fueled massacre in Citronelle, Alabama in 2016.
Dearman fired his attorneys earlier this year and ended all appeals of his conviction and death sentence.
“I’ve decided to drop my appeals and have my sentence carried out… I was fairly tried and convicted. I agreed with the court’s decision,” he told AL.com in a phone interview from death row this spring.
“Whether I was in my right mind or not, innocent lives were lost and the crime was committed,” he said.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey announced Dearman will be executed between 12 a.m. October 17 and 6 a.m. October 18.
He chose to die by lethal injection rather than nitrogen hypoxia — a controversial execution method that was introduced to Alabama just this year.
While Dearman had said earlier this year he wasn’t prepared to die any time soon, he penned a letter to the Alabama Attorney General’s Office last month, outraged that other death row inmates were jumping line ahead of him, according to AL.com.
“I have done everything that is required to drop my appeals and have my sentence carried out and I am compotent [sic] and of a sound mind…can you please respond to this letter to let me know what the hold up is??????” the convict wrote.
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“All this is hard on not only me but my family and the longer it takes the more me and my family have to go through,” Dearman added.
Dearman was abusive towards his girlfriend at the time, Laneta Lester, and the day before the killings, Lester’s brother picked her up and took her to safety at his home in a remote area of Mobile County near Citronelle, according to court documents.
Dearman showed up at the home multiple times that night, but no one there would allow him inside.
In the early morning hours of Aug. 20, 2016, Dearman picked up an ax from the yard, broke into the home and started hacking at the victims while they slept.
After attacking five victims with an ax and fatally shooting them, Dearman forced Lester, who was unharmed, and a 3-month-old child into a car and drove them to his father’s house in Mississippi.
The victims were Lester’s brother Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Chelsea Marie Reed, 22; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; and Shannon Melissa Randall, 35.
Chelsea Reed was pregnant with her and Justin Reed’s first child.
The 3-month-old boy, who was in bed with them at the time, was the first son of Turner and Randall.
He turned himself in the next day and admitted to authorities that he was “strung out” on drugs during the killings.
“If I was sober, that would have never happened,” he told AL.com.
Dearman was put on death row in 2018. He is scheduled to be the fifth person put to death in Alabama this year.
