A prisoner on death row in Alabama has said that he wants to be executed.
Derrick Dearman, 35, is being held on death row after being convicted of killing five people, including a pregnant woman.
His victims were Shannon Melissa Randall, Robert Lee Brown, Justin Kaleb Reed, Joseph Adam Turner, and pregnant Chelsea Marie Reed.
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Dearman broke into a house where the five had been in Citronelle, Alabama in 2016.
Once inside, he attacked and killed them separately using an axe, a pistol, and a shotgun.
He had previously been at the home a few days prior helping to scrap a trailer. However, Shannon Randall had said his behavior had made her feel uncomfortable and she did not want him around her child, who was aged three months at the time.
Dearman killed each of victims separately, and later turned himself in to the police.
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He pleaded guilty to capital murder charges in 2018, and a jury recommended the death penalty.
Dearman is almost six years into his sentence and is being held in the William C Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama.
Many prisoners on death row lodge appeals or request clemency, which would commute their sentence to life in prison.
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But in an unusual set of circumstances Dearman has actually requested that he be executed in order to provide some form of closure to the families of the people he killed.
The 35-year-old explained that in order to show the full extent of his remorse, he should be executed.
Speaking to CNN, Dearman said: “I don’t want to die.
“But I feel it in my heart that this is the only option that would help the victims’ families get the closure they need to move forward.”
Dearman added: "From my point of view, there’s nothing that I could ever say or do that will make this right.
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“I feel like I personally have a debt for the crimes that I committed. That’s the only way that I could ever show that I’m truly remorseful, that I truly do have a conscience.”
After he killed the five people it was his father who persuaded him to turn himself in to the police.
Dearman came to the conclusion that he wanted to be executed after 'talking to God' while he was in prison.
“It’s just time to do what I know is right and what I know I gotta do,” he added. “My family’s right was secured; now it’s time for the victims and their families to get what’s right to them and what they deserve and that’s for justice to be delivered.”
Topics: News, Crime, US News, Death Row