Alabama executes Derrick Dearman, man who killed 5 and asked to be put to death

Alabama executed a man Thursday who admitted to killing five people with an ax and gun during a drug-fueled rampage in 2016 and dropped his appeals to allow his lethal injection to go forward.

Derrick Dearman, 36, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m. Thursday at Holman prison in southern Alabama. He pleaded guilty in a rampage that began when he broke into the home where his estranged girlfriend had taken refuge.

Dearman had dropped his appeals this year. "I am guilty," he wrote in an April letter to a judge, adding that "it's not fair to the victims or their families to keep prolonging the justice that they so rightly deserve."