The State of Alabama executed Derrick Dearman, 36, by lethal injection today, despite evidence that he suffered from serious mental illness.
Mr. Dearman was convicted of capital murder in the August 19, 2016, killing of five people in Mobile County, Alabama. That day, he had been hearing voices, believed that people were “after” him, had used a large amount of methamphetamine, and had not slept for six days.
Mr. Dearman turned himself in, and while giving a statement to police, he cried and repeatedly expressed horror and remorse for what he had done. He later said of the crime: “It was like someone else had the steering wheel.”
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey scheduled Mr. Dearman’s execution date after he sent a handwritten letter to state officials saying that he no longer wished to appeal his death sentence. Mr. Dearman has struggled with severe suicidal ideation for his entire life. But Alabama courts have repeatedly failed to adequately consider his serious mental illness.
Court filings show that, at just four years old, Derrick Dearman displayed symptoms of severe depression and spoke to his mother “about wanting to die.” He was prescribed antidepressants at age 12 and began self-medicating with crack cocaine at 14. That year, Derrick barely survived a car accident that left him feeling that he “should have died.” At 16, he started using methamphetamines, and at 19, he drove his car off the road in an attempt to kill himself. In his early 20s, he was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit.
Mr. Dearman’s suicidal ideation continued after he was charged. In a report to the court, a psychiatric expert concluded that he was suicidal.
But despite substantial evidence indicating Mr. Dearman suffered from lifelong and severe mental illness, including bipolar disorder with psychotic features, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic depression, and neurocognitive disorder, the trial court refused to hold a competency hearing.
Instead, even after a psychiatrist who evaluated Mr. Dearman warned that “his probable mood disorder, suicidal thinking, and brain dysfunction [are] negatively affecting his thought processes and decision-making,” making it likely “he would self-sabotage and take whatever steps he deemed necessary to ensure a death verdict,” the trial judge allowed Mr. Dearman to fire his lawyers and plead guilty to multiple counts of capital murder without an agreement from the State not to seek the death penalty.
Mr. Dearman, representing himself, initially planned on presenting no evidence to convince the sentencer he deserved to live. Because of his family’s interest in sparing his life, 11 family members testified they loved Mr. Dearman deeply, described his struggles with addiction and mental illness, and begged the sentencer to impose a life sentence.
The trial court nonetheless sentenced Mr. Dearman to death. His family urged Mr. Dearman to appeal his death sentence in an effort to save his life. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals denied relief and the Alabama Supreme Court refused to review the case. Then, while his postconviction petition was pending, Mr. Dearman sent a handwritten note to state officials asking them to set an execution date. The trial judge allowed Mr. Dearman, again, to fire his lawyers and then dismissed his postconviction petition, paving the way for Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to schedule his execution.
Mental health issues permeate the capital punishment system. Even though lawmakers, mental health and legal experts, global human rights advocates, and the majority of Americans oppose executing people with serious mental illness, research suggests the death penalty actually targets this group.
Experts have found that 43% of people executed between 2000 and 2015 had a mental illness diagnosis such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or PTSD. And it is estimated that at least 20% of people on death row have a serious mental illness.
Subjecting people with serious mental illness to the death penalty raises serious legal questions about a defendant’s competency to stand trial, the validity of a guilty plea, and whether the level of moral culpability necessary for the death penalty can be assigned to people impaired by delusions, hallucinations, or other symptoms of serious mental disorders. The Constitution requires courts to resolve these questions before sentencing someone to death.
Yet courts regularly fail to satisfy these constitutional guarantees.
In Mr. Dearman’s case, no Alabama court even conducted a hearing to evaluate his competency to plead guilty, waive his right to counsel, or stop his appeals.
And when sentencing Mr. Dearman, the court failed to consider his history of mental illness as a reason to impose a life-without-parole sentence rather than death—an unconstitutional error that defied Supreme Court precedent explicitly recognizing that this evidence must be considered in sentencing “because of the belief, long held by this society, that defendants who commit criminal acts that are attributable to … emotional and mental problems” are often “less culpable than defendants who have no such excuse.”1 Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 319 (1989).
Derrick Dearman stopped his appeals only after a lifetime of severe mental illness and suicidal behavior that Alabama courts have repeatedly ignored. The State of Alabama has now executed him despite serious questions about the constitutionality of his conviction and death sentence.