Huntsville man executed in Atmore for 1994 killing of convenience store clerk

ATMORE, Alabama
A man who committed the execution-style killing of a Huntsville convenience store clerk in 1994 has been executed.

(Alabama Department of Corrections)

Derrick O'Neal Mason, 37, was sentenced to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. at Holman Correctional Institute in Atmore. He was pronounced dead at 6:49 p.m.
In the final hours before the execution, Mason refused to eat breakfast and he wasn't expected to eat dinner, either, prison officials said. He did not request a special last meal, saying he was fasting today. Several people visited him at the prison, and five of Mason's family members were expected to witness the execution, while four of the victim's relatives were set to be witnesses. Their names were not released.
Mason apologized to the victim's family in his final statement. It was his second apology to the family -- the first was via letter two or three years after Cagle's death, and was issued out of "deep remorse and sadness," according to the executive director of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Mason's lawyers filed emergency appeals with the Alabama Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court asking that his scheduled execution be postponed for further review of his death penalty sentence. Those appeals were denied.
Gov. Robert Bentley on Wednesday afternoon declined to commute Mason's sentence to life in prison without the chance of parole.
Retired Madison County Circuit Court Judge Loyd Little wanted the governor to commute the death sentence, saying he had been on the bench 6 months when he issued his ruling and has since realized "it really was not the right decision."
Mason made Cagle remove her clothes and shot her at close range "while she sat naked and completely vulnerable" to Mason, Little said at sentencing.
Mason shot Cagle in the face at close range with a .380-caliber pistol after he saw that the first shot didn't kill her.
Little said during sentencing that Mason's crime was "extremely wicked, shockingly evil, outrageously wicked and vile and cruel, and with the actions of the defendant designed to inflict a high degree of pain and fear in the victim, with utter indifference to, or even enjoyment of, the suffering of this victim."
Mason is the fifth person executed in Alabama this year and the second from Huntsville. Leroy White was executed Jan. 13 for the shotgun slaying of his estranged wife, Ruby White, at her Evans Drive home in 1988.