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Alabama executes Derrick Dearman, man who killed 5 and asked to be put to death
Alabama executed a man Thursday who admitted to killing five people with an ax and gun during a drug-fueled rampage in 2016 and dropped his appeals to allow his lethal injection to go forward.
Derrick Dearman, 36, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m. Thursday at Holman prison in southern Alabama. He pleaded guilty in a rampage that began when he broke into the home where his estranged girlfriend had taken refuge.
Dearman had dropped his appeals this year. “I am guilty,” he wrote in an April letter to a judge, adding that “it’s not fair to the victims or their families to keep prolonging the justice that they so rightly deserve.”
“I am willingly giving all that I can possibly give to try and repay a small portion of my debt to society for all the terrible things I’ve done,” Dearman said in an audio recording sent this week to The Associated Press. “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.”
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Thursday that the execution was “in the interest of justice and finality for the families.”
“As a jury of his peers unanimously agreed, the gruesome facts of this case merited the ultimate punishment,” Marshall said. “Dearman viciously struck his victims with an axe, leaving them conscious and suffering for some time before he executed each at close range. Dearman showed no pity and no mercy.”
Alabama Department of Corrections via AP
Dearman’s execution was one of two planned Thursday in the U.S. Robert Roberson was scheduled to be the nation’s first person put to death for a murder conviction tied to the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, in the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, but a judge granted a request from Texas lawmakers to delay Robert Roberson’s execution. The judge’s order was expected to be quickly appealed by the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
Dearman’s was Alabama’s fifth execution of 2024. Two were carried out by nitrogen gas. The other two were by lethal injection, which remains the state’s primary method.
Killed on Aug. 20, 2016, at the home near Citronelle, about 30 miles north of Mobile, were Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; and Chelsea Marie Reed, 22.
Chelsea Reed, who was married to Justin Reed, was pregnant when she was killed. Turner, who was married to Randall, shared the home with the Reeds. Brown, who was Randall’s brother, was also staying there the night of the murders. Dearman’s girlfriend survived. Turner and Randall had their 3-month-old son with them when they were attacked, but the baby was unharmed.
The day before the killing, Joseph Turner, the brother of Dearman’s girlfriend, brought her to their home after Dearman became abusive toward her, according to a judge’s sentencing order.
Dearman had shown up at the home multiple times that night asking to see his girlfriend and was told he could not stay there. Sometime after 3 a.m., he returned when all the victims were asleep, according to a judge’s sentencing order. He worked his way through the house, attacking the victims with an ax taken from the yard and then with a gun found in the home, prosecutors said. He forced his girlfriend, who survived, to get in the car with him and drive to Mississippi.
Dearman surrendered to authorities at the request of his father, according to a judge’s 2018 sentencing order.
As he was escorted to jail, Dearman blamed the rampage on drugs, telling reporters that he was high on methamphetamine when he went into the home and that the “drugs were making me think things that weren’t really there happening.”
Dearman initially pleaded not guilty but changed his plea to guilty after firing his attorneys. Because it was a capital murder case, Alabama law required a jury to hear the evidence and determine whether the state had proven the case. The jury found Dearman guilty and unanimously recommended a death sentence.
Before he dropped his appeal, Dearman’s lawyers argued that his trial counsel failed to do enough to demonstrate Dearman’s mental illness and “lack of competency to plead guilty.” The Equal Justice Initiative, which represented Dearman in the appeal, wrote on its website Wednesday that Dearman “suffered from lifelong and severe mental illness, including bipolar disorder with psychotic features.”
Dearman had been on death row since 2018.
In the hours ahead of his execution by lethal injection, Dearman had visitation with his sons, sister and father. He had a final meal of a seafood platter brought in from a local restaurant.
Tropical Storm Sara made landfall in Belize on Sunday as forecasters expect heavy rain to cause life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides.
The storm made landfall near Dangriga, about 55 miles southeast of the capital Belmopan, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.
This comes after Sara drenched the northern coast of Honduras, where it stalled since Friday, swelling rivers and trapping people at home.
Moises Castillo / AP
One death was reported Saturday morning by Honduras Emergency Management, who also said that there have been at least 90 rescues and over 47,000 people affected by the storm.
The Hurricane Center’s tropical storm warning as of Sunday included Honduras’ Bay Islands as well as the country’s northern coast from Punta Castilla to its border with Guatemala; the Caribbean coast of Guatemala; Belize’s coast and northward into the coast of Mexico’s state of Quintana Roo, from Chetumal to Puerto Costa Maya.
The storm, which is moving at 6 mph, will continue to move inland over the Yucatan Peninsula and could drop up to 10 inches of rain across the area, with localized totals reaching 15 inches, through early next week. The conditions “will result in areas of flash flooding, perhaps significant, along with the potential of mudslides,” according to the Hurricane Center.
NOAA/National Hurricane Center
“A storm surge could raise water levels by as much as 1 to 3 feet above ground level near and to the north of where the center of Sara crosses the coast of Belize,” the center said Sunday. “Near the coast, the surge will be accompanied by large and destructive waves.”
Sara is the 18th named storm of the 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season, which officially runs from June 1 until Nov. 30, with activity typically peaking between mid-August and mid-October. An average season brings 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three major hurricanes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which did predict the 2024 season would produce “above average” numbers.
A gold pocket watch given to the ship captain who rescued 700 survivors from the Titanic sold at auction for nearly $2 million, setting a record for memorabilia from the ship wreck.
The 18-carat Tiffany & Co. watch was given by three women survivors to Capt. Arthur Rostron for diverting his passenger ship, the RMS Carpathia, to save them and others after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in the north Atlantic on its maiden voyage in 1912.
Andrew Aldridge/Henry Aldridge and Son via AP
Auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Son, who sold the watch to a private collector in the United States on Saturday for 1.56 million British pounds, said it’s the most paid-for piece of Titanic memorabilia. The price includes taxes and fees paid by the buyer.
The watch was given to Rostron by the widow of John Jacob Astor, the richest man to die in the disaster and the widows of two other wealthy businessmen who went down with the ship.
Astor’s pocket watch, which was on his body when it was recovered seven days after the ship sank, had previously set the record for the highest price paid for a Titanic keepsake, fetching nearly $1.5 million (1.17 million pounds) from the same auction house in April.
Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said the fact that Titanic memorabilia has set two records this year demonstrates the enduring fascination with the story and the value of the dwindling supply and high demand for ship artifacts.
“Every man, woman and child had a story to tell, and those stories are told over a century later through the memorabilia,” he said.
Rostron was hailed a hero for his actions the night the Titanic sank and his crew was recognized for their bravery.
Andrew Aldridge/Henry Aldridge and Son via AP
The Carpathia was sailing from New York to the Mediterranean Sea when a radio operator heard a distress call from the Titanic in the early hours of April 15, 1912 and woke Rostron in his cabin. He turned his boat around and headed at full steam toward the doomed vessel, navigating through icebergs to get there.
By the time the Carpathia arrived, the Titanic had sunk and 1,500 people perished. But the crew located 20 lifeboats and rescued more than 700 passengers and took them back to New York.
Rostron was awarded the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal by President William Howard Taft and was later knighted by King George V.
Madeleine Astor, who had been helped into a lifeboat by her husband, presented the watch to Rostron at a luncheon at her mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York.
The inscription says it was given “with the heartfelt gratitude and appreciation of three survivors.” It lists Mrs. John B. Thayer and Mrs. George D. Widener alongside Astor’s married name.
“It was presented principally in gratitude for Rostron’s bravery in saving those lives,” Aldridge said. “Without Mr. Rostron, those 700 people wouldn’t have made it.”
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