Alabama has set a mid-October execution date for a man who admitted to killing five people with an axe and gun and later told a judge he was dropping his appeals so he could be put to death.
Derrick Dearman, 35, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Oct. 17 at a south Alabama prison. That date was set Tuesday by Gov. Kay Ivey after the Alabama Supreme Court authorized the death sentence, according to Supreme Court records.
Dearman was sentenced to death after pleading guilty to killing five members of his then-girlfriend’s family during an Aug. 20, 2016, rampage at their rural Mobile County home near Citronelle in southwest Alabama.
The inmate wrote to a judge in April asking that he be allowed to drop his appeals so his execution could go forward.
On the evening of the murders, Dearman had shown up at the home multiple times demanding to see his girlfriend, according to the records. He then attacked the members of the sleeping family, first with an ax taken from the yard and then with guns he found in the home, prosecutors said. He forced his girlfriend, who survived, to get in the car with him and drive to Mississippi.
Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; Chelsea Marie Reed, 22; and Robert Lee Brown, 26, were killed. One of the victims, Chelsea Reed, was pregnant when she was killed along with her unborn child.
Dearman has been on death row since 2018.
