Alabama completes execution of mass ax murderer

As reported in this local article, “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.”  Here is more:

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….

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.