Alabama has executed a death row inmate convicted of killing five people, including a pregnant woman, in 2016.
Derrick Dearman, 36, died by lethal injection at William C Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, where the state houses and executes its death row inmates.
Prior to his execution, Dearman had written several letters to Alabama officials, including in April to Attorney General Steve Marshall, requesting his death sentence be carried out.
“It is not fair to the victims or their families to continue to delay the justice they so rightly deserve,” Dearman wrote to Marshall. “I am guilty and was fairly sentenced to death.”
The inmate terminated his appeal attorneys with the Equal Justice Initiative earlier this year. The non-profit asserted that Dearman suffered from serious mental illness.
Dearman was sentenced to death for the 2016 murders of Joseph Adam Turner, 26, Robert Lee Brown, 26, Chelsea Marie Reed, 22, Justin Kaleb Reed, 23, and Shannon Melissa Randall, 35, in Mobile County, Alabama. Reed was five months pregnant.
He pleaded guilty to capital murder charges in August 2018. A jury later sentenced him to death.
On the day of the murders, Dearman had used a large amount of methamphetamine and had not slept for six days. He began to hear voices and believed people were “after” him, according to the non-profit.
He was in a relationship with Turner’s sister Laneta Lester. She was staying with her brother and his wife, Randall, in Citronelle after she fled the home she shared with Dearman because he’d begun abusing her while under the influence.
Dearman went to the residence but was asked to leave. He reportedly went back three more times in the same evening, leading the brother to alert police.
Police patrolled the area outside the home but stopped around 3am due to a shift change. Dearman later returned a fourth time on foot.
In the morning of August 20, Dearman broke into their homes through two sliding glass doors that were locked at the time.
Once inside, he woke up his girlfriend and brought her outside of the home to speak to her. He reportedly refused to leave and demanded that she stay and talk with him. He then left and returned with an axe that he found in a nearby tree.
Dearman then attacked the people inside with the axe, a pistol and a shotgun. He pulled a pistol from one of the victims and fatally shot them. Once the attacks were over, he went back to all of the victims and shot them. He then left the house with his girlfriend and the infant, who was sleeping in bed with his parents when they were murdered.
After he came down from his high, he drove to Mississippi and took his girlfriend and the baby to the police, turning himself in following a request from his father. Dearman said he had tried to fight his appeal for the sake of his family.