Derrick O'Neal Mason, 37, was pronounced dead at 6:49 p.m. local time at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. Mason had spent 16 years on death row. He was the fifth inmate executed in Alabama this year, and the 36th in the United States in 2011. Mason apologized to the victim's family and thanked his own before the lethal drugs were administered. In a September 8 letter, Judge Loyd Little Jr., the judge who sentenced Mason to death, wrote that if he had tried the case as a more experienced jurist, he would have sentenced Mason to life without the possibility of parole. Neither Little nor the defense team had any experience in capital murder cases before the Mason trial, the judge said. Little said that compared to other cases he presided over later, this one was not as "heinous, atrocious, or cruel." May he rest in peace.
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