Derrick Dearman, who killed 5 in south Alabama axe murders, set for lethal injection Thursday

An Alabama Death Row inmate who volunteered to die is set to be executed Thursday night, marking the fifth execution Alabama has carried out in 2024 and the second in less than a month.

Derrick Dearman, 36, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at 6 p.m. at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. Dearman, who killed five people, opted to die by the state’s three-drug lethal cocktail instead of breathing in nitrogen gas.

“I am willingly giving all that I can possibly give to try and repay a small portion of my debt to society for the terrible things that I have done,” Dearman said in a statement released earlier this week by his spiritual advisor.

“From this point forward, I hope that the focus will not be on me, but rather on the healing of all the people that I have hurt.”

Dearman was sent to death row in 2018 for the brutal slayings of five family members of his then-girlfriend in Citronelle in 2016. The victims were 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. Turner and Randall had a 3-month-old son in the bed with them when they were attacked, but he was unharmed.

After attacking his victims with an ax and then shooting them, Dearman forced his unharmed girlfriend, Laneta Lester, into a car, along with the 3-month-old boy, and drove them to Mississippi. The girlfriend and baby were later released.

In April, Dearman fired his attorneys from the Equal Justice Initiative and opted to end his appeals. He spoke to AL.com about his mindset at the time.

“I am guilty, plain and simple,” he said in a phone interview. “Everybody’s trying to talk me out of it,” he said. “But, I feel in my heart this is the right thing to do.”

This story will be updated throughout the evening, with live updates appearing at the top of the page. The original story continues below.

The crime

The killings happened in the early-morning hours of Aug. 20, 2016. Dearman was dating Lester at the time. Her brother, Joseph Adam Turner, lived in a remote area of Mobile County near Citronelle.

According to court records, Dearman was abusive to Lester, his girlfriend. The day before the murders, Turner picked her up and brought her to his home. Dearman showed up multiple times to the Citronelle home that night, but no one would allow Dearman inside the house.

Early the next morning, Dearman returned. Court records state that he picked up an ax from the yard, broke into the home and attacked everyone inside except for the infant and his girlfriend.

After the ambush, Dearman forced Lester and the baby boy into a car and took them to a family member’s house in Mississippi.

Soon after, the girlfriend and baby returned to south Alabama unharmed in the car. Dearman turned himself into authorities the following day.

A post on the Equal Justice Initiative‘s website— the legal nonprofit whom Dearman fired this spring– said on the day of the slayings, Dearman “had been hearing voices, believed that people were ’after’ him, had used a large amount of methamphetamine, and had not slept for six days.”

Dearman’s case

Representatives from the Equal Justice Initiative didn’t respond to requests for comment on Dearman’s case. Currently, Dearman doesn’t have any pending appeals, nor does he have legal representation.

But on that post on their website, the lawyers said Dearman “has struggled with severe suicidal ideation for his entire life.”

After firing his attorneys this spring, Dearman said he wasn’t seeking an imminent death date. “I mean, who wants to say, you know what, just come on and kill me? Nobody wants to die,” he said at the time.

But then the Alabama Supreme Court authorized several executions, and Gov. Kay Ivey set dates for Jamie Mills, Keith Gavin, and Alan Miller. Those three men were executed, while Dearman waited to die.

The court authorized an execution date to be set for Carey Dale Grayson—and the governor set it as Nov. 21—when Dearman wrote a letter to the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, expressing frustration that other men were set for execution before he was.

“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??????”

He wrote in the August letter, “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’s former attorney had argued in court records he was severely mentally ill at the time of the crime. Dearman himself said that his mind wasn’t right at the time. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what happened, he told AL.com.

“I remember every bit of it,” Dearman said through the fuzzy audio at Holman prison. It’s the prison where most Alabama Death Row inmates are housed, and the only one in the state with an execution chamber.

“It was like someone else had the steering wheel. It was like being at the movie theater or watching a movie and you want to turn your head or close your eyes because you didn’t want to see that part or that scene because it was that scary or horrible and not being able to. It’s like something else had the wheel,” Dearman said.

He’s set to be the fifth person Alabama executes in 2024. First was Kenneth Smith, who was the first inmate killed using nitrogen gas in the country. Smith was executed in January, setting off controversy across the world after Smith writhed on the gurney.

In May, Jamie Ray Mills was executed by lethal injection for the beating deaths of an elderly couple with a machete, ball-peen hammer, and a tire iron two decades ago.

In July, Alabama executed 64-year-old Keith Edmund Gavin for a 1998 murder at a north Alabama ATM. He was put to death by lethal injection, because he didn’t change his method of execution to gas when he had the opportunity to do so in 2018.

In September, Alan Eugene Miller was the second inmate to be executed using nitrogen pumped through a gas mask. He had no pending appeals at the time of his death, after he entered into a confidential settlement with the state weeks earlier.

Grayson is set to be the sixth inmate to be executed in Alabama this year on Nov. 21, and is set to die by nitrogen. His lawyers from the Federal Public Defenders for the Middle District of Alabama are currently fighting the way Alabama handles the nitrogen execution process. Grayson was convicted with three other men for the Feb. 22, 1994 slaying of Vicki Lynn DeBlieux, who was kidnapped while hitchhiking.

If Thursday night’s lethal injection ends Dearman’s life, he will be the first inmate since 2013 to be executed after spending less than a decade on Alabama Death Row. That year, Andrew Lackey was put to death for the 2005 murder of an 80-year-old World War II veteran he was trying to rob.

Like Dearman, Lackey had given up his appeals and asked for his execution to be scheduled.

The Equal Justice Initiaive wrote online, “Derrick Dearman stopped his appeals only after a lifetime of severe mental illness and suicidal behavior that Alabama courts have repeatedly ignored. The State of Alabama now plans to execute him despite serious questions about the constitutionality of his conviction and death sentence.”

There are currently 162 inmates on Alabama Death Row, including five women.