Derrick Dearman is a 35-year-old man who was convicted for the gruesome murders of six individuals in 2016. He was found guilty on 12 counts of capital murder in 2018. The judge sentenced him to death, and he has been waiting on death row since at Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama. Now, he is scheduled to be lethally injected on October 17, 2024. The timeframe for his execution has been set for midnight on Thursday until 6 a.m. on October 18.
Events Leading to the Murders
Derrick Dearman started dating a woman named Laneta Lester at the beginning of 2016. Dearman had allegedly been abusive towards Lester for the entirety of their relationship. His former wife, Crystal Dearman, seemingly bolstered those claims when she was interviewed by WALA-TV when she confessed to divorcing him due to his violent tendencies. She claimed he “always had a temper, especially when he didn’t get his way.” Lester ended up moving out of the home she shared with Dearman at the time since he was increasingly violent towards her. Lester moved in with her brother, Joseph Turner, his wife, and a 3-month-old baby. The couple’s friends, Chelsea and Justin Reed, stayed in the house as well.
On August 19, 2016, everyone in the house, plus another friend, Robert Lee Brown, decided to have a cookout and a movie night. Once they settled in to watch a movie, Derrick Dearman showed up but was ordered to leave. Three hours rolled by, and Dearman showed up once again. Lester’s brother sternly told Dearman he was no longer allowed on the property. Turner’s girlfriend, Shannon Randall, called the Citronelle Police to have him escorted off the property. However, by the time they arrived, he was gone. The police patrolled the area but had no luck in finding him. Around 3 a.m. the next day, Dearman returned and knocked on Lester’s window when she allegedly let him inside.
When Derrick Dearman entered the home, he shot all five of the victims before using the ax he found. By the time the police arrived, it was too late. They found Joseph Turner, Shannon Randall, Robert Brown, a pregnant Chelsea Reed, and Justin Reed all deceased. Dearman had forcibly kidnapped Lester and her nephew and drove to Greene County, Mississippi. They went to multiple family and friends’ homes before settling into sleep. After waking, they all rode over to Dearman’s dad’s house. Dearman stepped out of the car, and Lester saw her chance to get her and her nephew to safety. She hopped in the driver’s seat and drove straight to the Citronelle Police Department.
History of Alabama’s Death Penalty
Alabama has been sentencing people to death for their crimes since 1812. They have a long and colorful history of executions. Their first known execution was a hanging for murder. In 1927, they replaced the hanging method with electrocution. Decades later, in the early 1970s, the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment. However, that only lasted five years before Alabama reinstated capital punishment, and soon after, so did the Supreme Court. In 2002, Lynda Lyon Block was the last person to be involuntarily executed by electrocution in the state. Afterward, lethal injection became the default unless the inmate requested otherwise.
The start of their questionable methods and botched executions began in the 2010s. In 2011, Jason Williams was executed using a mix of illegally acquired drugs after the DEA had previously confiscated Alabama’s unlawfully obtained supply of sodium thiopental. In 2018, they introduced a new method of execution called nitrogen hypoxia, where a gas mask is placed on the inmate’s face and produces nitrogen gas. Kenneth Smith was the first to be executed using nitrogen hypoxia after a failed lethal injection in 2022. Prison officials stabbed Smith with needles all over his body for hours before calling off the execution and rescheduling for 2024.
Governor Kay Ivey suspended executions in 2022 after several botched executions. She called upon the Alabama Department of Corrections to review for trial errors in any cases involving the death penalty. However, the Alabama Supreme Court overruled the governor’s decision in 2023 and no longer required the court to read transcripts for errors. A lawsuit has been filed against the state of Alabama to stop the use of nitrogen gas as a means of execution. It mentions that the state has conducted 60% of all botched executions, three of which were consecutive in 2022. The lawsuit states, “By any metric, the State of Alabama is the least competent state at carrying out executions in this country.”
Final Thoughts
Derrick Dearman’s father convinced him to confess to the police what he had done. Once arrested, Dearman claimed to be on methamphetamine, causing him to commit the murders. During his interview, he said, “Through all this, I truly thought everyone was trying to kidnap and hurt her. After everything, I told my girlfriend to grab the baby and get in the car. She did so out of fear of me.” Derrick Dearman decided to defend himself at his trial, where he ended up being found guilty and sentenced to death. He will be the next to be executed in the state of Alabama on October 17, 2024. Alabama maintains the highest per capita execution rates in the United States.
