The Alabama Supreme Court has issued an order for the execution of death row inmate Derrick Dearman by lethal injection, and the Alabama Department of Corrections is proceeding. Dearman was sentenced to death for the 2016 capital murders of Joseph Adam Turner, Robert Lee Brown, Chelsea Marie Reed, Justin Kaleb Reed, and Shannon Melissa Randall.
Governor Kay Ivey has set a 30-hour window for the execution, between midnight on Thursday, October 17, ending at 6:00 a.m. on Friday, October 18 at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama.
Dearman, 36, pleaded guilty in 2018 to one of the most brutal mass murders in Alabama’s history. He was sentenced to death and, in April of this year, waived his rights to any further appeals, stating that he wants to be executed. In his statement regarding the waiver of his appeal rights, Dearman said it was time for “justice to be delivered” and that “it’s the right thing to do.”
Dearman had pleaded guilty in 2018 to the August 2016 murders of Robert Lee Brown, Chelsea Marie Reed, Justin Kaleb Reed, Joseph Adam Turner, and Shannon Melissa Randall in Citronelle.
During a court hearing, Mobile County Circuit Court Judge Rick Stout presented a letter from Dearman confessing to the murders and expressing his desire to be executed. Dearman stated that he had previously filed appeals at the request of his family.
“It’s just time to do what I know is right and what I know I gotta do,” Dearman was quoted as saying. “My family’s right was secured. Now it’s time for the victims and their families to get what’s right to them and what they deserve and that’s for justice to be delivered. I feel it in my heart that this is the only option that would help the victims’ families get the closure they need to move forward. I made peace with my decision.”
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In the events leading up to the murders, Dearman visited a home on Jim Platt Road in Citronelle multiple times on the day of the killings and was asked to leave each time. On his final visit, angry after being told to leave earlier and under the influence of meth, Dearman found an ax outside the home, forced his way inside, and attacked the five victims with the ax and a handgun, according to testimony at the trial.
Turner and Randall were married, as were the Reeds, and Chelsea Reed was five months pregnant.
Medical examiners testified that all five victims were still alive after being attacked with the ax, and they struggled with Dearman over a handgun he had taken from Justin Reed. Dearman ultimately shot each of the victims. He also used a 12-gauge shotgun to kill Randall as she reached for her infant son, according to testimony.
Laneta Lester, who survived the attacks, testified that she managed to get Randall’s infant out of the house, but Dearman forced her and the child to leave the scene with him in a car belonging to one of the victims. She later escaped and alerted authorities to the crime.
Later that day, Dearman turned himself in to authorities in Mississippi and was extradited to Alabama. The house where the murders occurred was destroyed by fire on September 4, 2016, approximately two weeks after the massacre.
If the execution proceeds as scheduled, Dearman will be the fifth person executed in Alabama this year and the second within a 30-day period.
Courtesy of Call News.
