By Abigail Brooks and Corky Siemaszko -
NBC News
A convicted murderer on death row in Alabama told NBC News exclusively that he wants to pay the price for his crimes and does not want to further delay justice for the families of the five people he killed eight years ago. .
In his first interview ever with the press, Derrick Dearman said that, earlier this week, he sent nine letters to Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, Attorney General Steve Marshall, and judges and others involved in the case, informing them that he is giving up his judicial appeals and wants to be executed.
[Alabama seeks to carry out another nitrogen gas execution]
Dearman, 36, said he feels peace about his decision: "Now is the time for the victims and their families to get the justice they deserve so they can have closure," William C. Holman said in a telephone interview from the prison. in Atmore, Alabama.
Dearman said he has not yet communicated his decision to the victims' families, but he intends to write to them.
“I have spent many nights thinking about what I would say to them if I had the opportunity, the opportunity to tell them something,” he said, “it is part of the reasons why I made my decision to have my sentence carried out. Words have no weight in this situation. The only thing I would say to everyone who has been hurt by my actions is to forgive me, not for me, but for them. “This way you will free your heart to be able to truly heal.”
Derrick DearmanAP
Dearman made his announcement two months after the Alabama Supreme Court denied an appeal of his sentence and upheld his six murder convictions (including the death of 22-year-old Chelsea Marie Reed's five-month-old fetus).
Dearman, who is from Leakesville, Mississippi, said he filed the appeals not for himself but for his family. “They said, 'Derrick just give us a couple more years with this appeals process,'” he said. “'We deserve it, it's our right as your family to fight for your life' and I said, 'OK.' “That was almost six years ago, and I think I gave them a fair chance,” he added.
[The prisoner
executed with nitrogen gas writhed on the stretcher with labored breathing: “He fought for his life for minutes”]
NBC News contacted the family of Reed and the other victims: Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; and Joseph Adam Turner, 26.
Dearman has already been forgiven by Brown's father. “I can't get my son back,” Robert F. Brown said in September 2016, at Dearman's hearing in a Mobile court. “I forgive him because he doesn't know any better. “I feel sorry for his family,” he added.
The tragic series of events began on August 20, 2016, when Dearman, armed with an ax and six firearms, broke into a bungalow outside rural Citronelle, Alabama.
High on methamphetamine and furious that his ex-girlfriend, Laneta Lester, had taken refuge at his brother's house, Dearman attacked the victims while they slept. He then kidnapped Lester and Turner's three-month-old son, Darren, and fled to his father's home near the border in Leakesville.
The first indication that something horrible had happened on Jim Platt Road was when Lester and the baby, who had been freed by Dearman, arrived at the Citronelle police station to tell what had happened.
[Alabama executes an inmate with nitrogen gas for the first time in the history of the US death penalty]
Dearman said he turned himself in to Leakesville police when the drugs wore off and he realized what he did. “I am guilty, plain and simple, I turned myself in and pleaded guilty,” he said.
“Once they moved me county and I spent a week there, sleeping every day, my mind cleared up a little bit more, a little bit more, and I was in shock. “I couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of what had happened, because those were good people,” she added.
Dearman, who battled drug addiction since he was a teenager, said they turned him into a monster.
The victims from left to right: Chelsea Marie Reed; Shannon Melissa Randall; Robert Lee Brown; Justin Kaleb Reed; and Joseph Adam Turner.Mobile County Sheriff's Office
“Drugs turned me into a very unpredictable, unstable and violent person,” he said, “It's not who I am. The person who committed those crimes and the person I really am are different,” but he added that it is no excuse for what he did. “It doesn’t change the fact that crimes were committed.”
When he appeared before a judge, Dearman pleaded not guilty, on behalf of his family, to six counts of capital murder and two counts of kidnapping. “They knew I was not in my right mind, they knew that sober I would never have done those horrible things,” he said, “I wasn't even going to litigate my conviction, but I allowed my family to go up to court and plead not to seek the death penalty.” ”.
Two weeks after the murders, the crime scene, the Turner house, was burned. Before the detectives collected the evidence they needed. In September 2018, Dearman fired his two court-appointed attorneys and pleaded guilty.
Under Alabama law, even a suspect who pleads guilty to capital murder must be tried by a jury. In October 2018, a jury sentenced him. It is unclear what the protocols are in Alabama for an inmate who wants to be executed; Dearman already knows that he wants to die and opted for lethal injection.
The state has a May 30 execution scheduled for Jamie Mills and seeks to execute another prisoner, Alan Miller, with nitrogen gas later in the year. Miller, who survived lethal injection in 2022, filed a lawsuit this week to block his execution with nitrogen, alleging that the first death with the new method caused cruel and prolonged suffering. Alabama carried out the first execution with this gas earlier in the year in the case of Kenneth Eugene Smith, who had also survived lethal injection.
“Does the execution scare me? Yes and no,” Dearman responded when asked about the botched executions. “On the one hand you have, you know, worse complications for whatever reason, it's agonizing and painful. There is that possibility. “Alabama is known for having problems with its enforcement processes,” he said, but added, “It's actually the last thing I think about.” “My mind is so focused on making sure I do the right thing.”
Dearman has already chosen a spiritual guide in the Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood. “While I vehemently oppose the state of Alabama having the right to kill him, Derrick Dearman is competent to make his own decisions and I will continue to pray with him as he moves forward,” Hood said.
Dearman says his decision does not mean he agrees with the death penalty for the men he lives with at Holman.
“There are guys in the general population who committed much worse crimes than half the men on death row,” he explained. “There are men on death row who, if you let them go free today, would not commit a crime again and would be productive members of society.”
Dearman added that dying is preferable to spending the rest of your life in Alabama's brutal prison system, but that is not the reason he wants to be executed.
“Do I do it because I can't live with myself? No,” she noted. “I made the decision for different reasons. One of them is so that all parties involved, not only the victims and their families, but also my family, can have some kind of closure and begin to heal and move forward.”