The State of Alabama is set to carry out its fifth execution of the year on Thursday night with the scheduled lethal injection of Derrick Dearman, who was convicted of murdering five of his girlfriend's relatives with an axe and gun.
Governor Kay Ivey has yet to make her standard formal announcement that she will not be granting Dearman clemency. However, there is no indication that this is a possibility.
Ivey set the 30-hour timeframe for the execution, beginning at midnight Thursday morning and ending at 6:00 am on Friday. The tentative start time will be 6:00 p.m. on Thursday. The State had to call off two executions last year after Alabama Department of Corrections employees failed to establish an IV line. However, since a complete state overhaul of the execution protocols, every scheduled execution has gone down without issue.
This will be the fifth execution for the State this year, and the sixth has already been scheduled for November. If the State proceeds without interruption, it will tie the current record.
According to court documents, Dearman was in a "volatile" relationship with his long-time girlfriend, Laneta Lester.
In the early morning hours of Aug. 20, 2016, Lester was staying at the home of her brother and his wife in Citronelle. Dearman was reportedly told he was not welcome in the House. In a gruesome scene detailed in court documents, Dearman broke into the house armed with an axe and began his rampage by killing a sleeping man on a recliner.
Dearman went on to attack several others in the house with an axe, returning with a gun to finish off two who were not fatally wounded by the axe, including a woman 18 weeks pregnant.
At the end of it all, three men, two women and the unborn baby lay dead by Dearman's hand. He fled the house that early morning in a stolen vehicle with Lester and the infant child of two of the victims. Dearman turned himself in to law enforcement the following day.
Dearman was indicted for 12 counts of capital murder and two counts of first-degree kidnapping. He agreed to plead guilty to the five counts of murder after the State moved to drop a sixth count in the case of an unborn child carried by one of his victims.
The jury unanimously voted for Dearman to be put to death in October 2018.
Next month's execution is scheduled to take place by nitrogen hypoxia in the case of Carey Dale Grayson, 49, who murdered a female hitchhiker along with several accomplices.
RELATED: Federal judge hears testimony from lawyers attempting to block November nitrogen hypoxia execution
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email craig.monger@1819news.com.
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