October 18th 2024.
Derrick Dearman, a death row inmate convicted of killing five people, including a pregnant woman, was put to death on Thursday by lethal injection. This came after Dearman, 36, had requested in a letter back in April that his death sentence be carried out.
Before his execution, Dearman was given a final meal of a seafood platter, which he had requested after writing multiple letters to Alabama authorities, including the attorney general, expressing his desire for the execution. In one of these letters, he wrote, "It is not fair to the victims or their families to continue to delay the justice they so rightly deserve. I am guilty and was fairly sentenced to death."
Dearman's crimes were committed in 2016, when he had not slept for six days and was under the influence of methamphetamine. He also suffered from severe mental illness, hearing voices and believing people were chasing him. Despite this, he brutally murdered five members of his girlfriend's family in the middle of the night, using an axe and a gun.
On the day of his execution, Dearman was escorted into the execution chamber at William C Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, where he was attached to a gurney. He took the opportunity to apologize to the family members of his victims, saying, "Forgive me. This is not for me. This is for you. I've taken so much." He also reassured his own family, saying, "Y'all already know I love y'all."
After some difficulty finding his veins, the lethal injection was administered and Dearman seemed to lose consciousness within minutes. He was pronounced dead at 6:14pm on Thursday. His case had garnered attention for his decision to drop all appeals and accept his fate.
Dearman's victims included his girlfriend, who was five months pregnant, as well as four of her family members. In 2018, he pleaded guilty to capital murder charges and was sentenced to death by a jury. He was the only person to be executed in the US on Thursday, as the execution of another death row inmate in Texas was halted by the state's Supreme Court.
The inmate, Robert Roberson, had been convicted of killing his two-year-old daughter in 2002. However, his attorneys argued that she had died from pneumonia complications, not from shaken baby syndrome as was originally believed. This case had sparked controversy and raised questions about the validity of the shaken baby syndrome diagnosis.
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