On August 20, 2016, a mass killing occurred in Citronelle, Alabama, United States, resulting in the deaths of five people, including a woman who was five months pregnant.
They were killed in the early morning in a private residence in a rural area west of the city.
The Alabama Supreme Court upheld the sentence and authorized the state to set a date for his execution.
In the early morning of August 20, 2016, a male assailant entered a residence in the 1700 block of Jim Platt Road about 4 a.m., in a rural area west of Citronelle.
[5] He kidnapped Laneta Lester, his estranged girlfriend, and an infant of her brother and his wife;[6] he took them with him to his father's house in Leakesville, Mississippi, about 30 miles to the west.
Lester returned to Citronelle with the infant, where she went to the police department and notified authorities about the killings.
[7][8][3][9][10][11] Investigators said that residents had made a 9-1-1 call from the house about 1 a.m., several hours before the killings, and reported that Derrick Dearman was on the property.
The other three adult victims sharing the house included another married couple, of which the woman was five months pregnant.
She had left him due to an allegedly abusive relationship and gone to Citronelle to her brother's house, seeking shelter with him.
[20] While being escorted to an administrative building, he reportedly said, "Don't do drugs", apologized, and said he turned himself in after realizing what he had done.
[11][12] It was classified as capital murder first, because it was associated with attempted burglary, and secondly, because two or more persons were killed in commission of the same crime.
It was intended to cover three topics: Dearman's competency to stand trial, his mental capacity at the time of the crimes, and his intelligence quotient (IQ).
[24][25] Under Alabama law, because of the capital murder charges, he was still subject to a jury trial, with the possibility of receiving a death sentence.
[29][30] On September 3, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court approved the death warrant of Dearman, who was scheduled to be executed on October 17, 2024.