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On Tuesday, Gov. Kay Ivey announced an Oct. 17 execution date for Derrick Dearman, 35, who confessed to the brutal murders of five people in Citronelle in 2016. This marks the sixth scheduled execution of an Alabama convict this year.
Dearman was sentenced to death by a jury in 2018 and fired his attorneys earlier this year, subsequently requesting that Ivey and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall set his execution date.
“I’ve decided to drop my appeals and have my sentence carried out… I was fairly tried and convicted. I agreed with the court’s decision,” Dearman told AL.com in April.
2024 will now tie 2011 and 2009 for the year with the most executions in the state since capital punishment was reinstated nationally in 1976. Alabama ranks seventh in most executions by state despite ranking 24th in total population.
Dearman will be put to death by lethal injection as opposed to nitrogen hypoxia, the controversial method used to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith earlier this year and the same method which will be used in Alan Eugene Miller and Carey Dale Grayson’s September and November executions.
Smith’s execution was the first ever to use nitrogen hypoxia and drew national criticism after Smith convulsed for minutes on the death chamber gurney. Smith had previously filed appeals arguing that the method violated his Eighth Amendment rights and should be considered “cruel and unusual punishment.” The Supreme Court rejected those appeals with the Court’s three liberal justices dissenting.
However, lethal injection remains the primary method of execution in the state. Jamie Ray Mills and Keith Edmund Gavin were both put to death by lethal injection earlier this year.
