Derrick Dearman was executed by the State of Alabama for the murders of five people
According to court documents Derrick Dearman during a meth binge would go on a rampage and would murder Joseph Adam Turner, 26, Shannon Melissa Randall, 35, Robert Lee Brown, 26, Justin Kaleb Reed, 23 and Chelsea Marie Reed, 22, who was five months pregnant.
Derrick Dearman would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Dearman would waive all of his appeals and asked to be executed
Derrick Dearman would be executed by lethal injection on October 17 2024
Derrick Dearman Execution
Alabama executed Derrick Dearman Thursday evening by lethal injection for the brutal killings of five members of his then-girlfriend’s family in Mobile County in 2016. It was the state’s second execution in a span of three weeks.
Court records show he used an ax, a .45 cal. handgun and a shotgun in the massacre at a home in Citronelle, which is about 30 miles north of Mobile. One of the victims, Chelsea Marie Reed, was five months pregnant.
The execution happened in the death chamber of the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, about an hour and a half south of Montgomery. Dearman had fired his attorneys from the Equal Justice Initiative earlier in the year and asked all appeals on his behalf be halted. He also mailed letters to Attorney General Steve Marshal and Gov. Kay Ivey asking that his execution proceed.
Five media witnesses and five witnesses for Derrick Dearman were led into the observation room about 5:45 p.m. There are a total of three observations rooms to the death chamber, the other two reserved for victims’ family and a room for state witnesses.
The witness room is dimly lit and smells strongly of disinfectant. It’s about 8-feet-by-12-feet and has 13 padded armchairs inside, facing a large window. The following times are approximate. There’s a digital clock in the death chamber, but it doesn’t display seconds. Media witnesses are not allowed phones or watches while in the room.
5:53 p.m.: The curtain covering the window looking into the death chamber was opened. Dearman was laying cruciform on a gurney, with his head slightly elevated. There was an IV line going into his inner left elbow. The other line could not be seen. Two IV lines led from the death chamber through a small square hole to the control room.
Dearman had his eyes closed. At times he opened them and stared at the ceiling. He appeared to be mumbling at times throughout the execution. He did not appear to acknowledge his witnesses.
He was strapped to the gurney with the straps crisscrossing his chest. He was covered by a tightly-tucked white sheet and was wearing khaki prison garb.
5:55 p.m.: Holman warden Terry Raybon read the death warrant and governor’s warrant setting the execution.
Derrick Dearman was given an opportunity for a last statement.
“To the victims’ family, forgive me, this is not for me it is for you,” he said. “I have taken so much…” then his words were inaudible. “To my family, y’all already know… I love y’all.”
His spiritual advisor was not present in the death chamber.
5:57 p.m.: Derrick Dearman swallowed hard several times. He clenched his left hand into a fist and then unclenched it several times.
5:58 p.m.: Dearman opened and closed his eyes several times. He stared at the ceiling.
5:59 p.m.: The execution appeared to begin.
6:00 p.m.: He raised his head and appeared to speak to the three corrections officers in the chamber.
6:01 p.m.: Dearman appeared to lose consciousness. His breathing became shallow.
6:02 p.m.: His abdomen fluttered several times. A guard approached Dearman, bent down and did a consciousness check by yelling Dearman’s name into his left ear, raking his thumb across Dearman’s left eyelid and pinching and twisting the shin of his inner left elbow
6:03 p.m.: Dearman appeared to be breathing shallowly.
6:04 p.m.: He appeared to stop breathing.
6:08 p.m.: The curtain was drawn. Dearman’s father sobbed, “Derrick, oh Derrick! Derrick, don’t go.”
Witnesses then filed out of the room. The Alabama Department of Corrections placed his official time of death at 6:14 p.m.
In a news conference following the execution, Prisons Commissioner John Hamm said it took “two sticks” to gain access to the two IV lines that carried the deadly cocktail that ended Dearman’s life.
Derrick Dearman requested at the last minute that his spiritual advisor, Rev. Jeff Hood, not be in the death chamber, Hamm said. Hood was then escorted off prison property. Hamm said he didn’t know why Dearman requested Hood not be present.
Robert Brown, father of victim Robert Lee Brown, addressed the media in the news conference.
“This don’t bring nothing back,” he said of the execution. “I can’t get my son back, I can’t get them back.”
Brown said he forgives Dearman.
“I have to forgive him,” he said. “He asked us to forgive him. You can’t go to the Lord with a clenched fist, you have to have an open heart, like a baby’s heart.”
In the week before the execution, Dearman, 36, provided the following statement through Hood, his spiritual advisor:
“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 the statement. “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.”
The day before his execution, Derrick Dearman had visitors including friend Veronica Jernigan, father Gary Dearman, son Hayden Dearman, son Braxton Dearman, brother-in-law Ronzie Thomas, and sister Abigail Thomas. He took no phone calls.
His final meal was a seafood platter brought in from a local restaurant.
Derrick Dearman’s witnesses to the execution were: his sister Abigail Thomas, Veronica Jernigan, Abigail Brooks, Ronzie Thomas and Gary Dearman.
Derrick Dearman’s crime
Court records show Dearman and his then-girlfriend had a volatile relationship. The girlfriend had gone to her family’s home seeking refuge, court records show. Shannon Melissa Randall, the mother of a three-month-old son, expressed concern about how Dearman was acting and said she didn’t want him staying the night at the home.
Records show Dearman had a history of drug abuse and he told investigators that he used methamphetamine later that night before he returned to the home when the family was asleep. He pulled an ax from a tree in the yard before going into the home
He was also armed with the handgun and a shotgun.
His first victims were Shannon Melissa Randall, 35, and her husband and father of her son, Joseph Adam Turner, 26. They were asleep with the infant between them when Dearman bludgeoned them with the ax. He also killed Robert Lee Brown, 26, Joseph Kaleb Reed, 23, and Chelsea Marie Reed, 22, who was pregnant. The Reeds were married. All the victims were related to each other and Dearman’s then-girlfriend.
Court records show he shot all five victims to ensure they were dead.
He then fled the home with his girlfriend and the infant, going to his native Mississippi. He later turned himself in.
He pleaded guilty to five counts to capital murder on Aug. 31, 2018, and a jury later recommend the death penalty.
Alabama’s 2024 executions
Alabama is on track to tying the record for most executions in a year at six. The state is ending the string with back to back to back execution is September, October and November. In the November execution, scheduled for the Thursday before Thanksgiving, goes forward the state will have conducted three executions in eight weeks.
Kenneth Eugene Smith was executed in January by nitrogen gas hypoxia, the first such execution that was conducted in the country.
Jamie Ray Mills was executed by lethal injection in May.
Keith Edmund Gavin was executed by lethal injection in July.
Alan Eugene Miller was executed by nitrogen gas hypoxia in September.
The state plans to execute Carey Dale Grayson by nitrogen gas hypoxia on Nov. 21. He was convicted in the 1994 Jefferson County murder of Vickie Deblieux, who was hitchhiking from Tennessee to visit relatives in Louisiana
