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The US Supreme Court has declined to halt the scheduled execution Tuesday evening of Missouri death row inmate Brian Dorsey, who has professed deep remorse for the 2006 murders of his cousin and her husband while earning support from more than 70 correctional officers who backed sparing his life.
The state’s Republican governor this week denied clemency in a significant blow to Dorsey, 52, who had petitioned for a commutation of his sentence to life in prison, citing his remorse, his rehabilitation while behind bars and his representation at trial by attorneys who allegedly had a “financial conflict of interest.”
“Executing Brian Dorsey is a pointless cruelty, an exercise of the State’s power that serves no legitimate penological purpose,” his attorney Kirk Henderson said in a statement early Tuesday afternoon. “We will miss his smile and his bear hugs. It has been my honor to know Brian and to share his story.”
While Dorsey’s petition also cited support by some relatives who his attorneys said were also related to the victims, other members of the victims’ families support the execution, telling CNN in a statement Dorsey committed the “ultimate betrayal” when he killed his cousin Sarah Bonnie and her husband Benjamin and left their daughter Jade, then 4 years old, in the home with her parents’ bodies locked in their bedroom.
“Not only did Jade lose her parents but we also lost a daughter and son, sister and brother, aunt and uncle, and a great aunt and great uncle to so many,” the statement from Sarah Bonnie’s family reads, in part.
“They were loved so deeply by anyone that knew them,” it said. “All of these years of pain and suffering we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Brian will get the justice that Sarah and Ben have deserved for so long.”
Dorsey’s arguments for clemency were unconvincing for Gov. Mike Parson, who said in a statement Monday the state would carry out the inmate’s death sentence as ordered by the Missouri Supreme Court. The execution warrant calls for Dorsey to be executed within a 24-hour window beginning at 6 p.m. CT Tuesday.
“Brian Dorsey punished his loving family for helping him in a time of need,” Parson said. “His cousins invited him into their home where he was surrounded by family and friends, then gave him a place to stay. Dorsey repaid them with cruelty, inhumane violence, and murder.”
“The pain Dorsey brought to others can never be rectified, but carrying out Dorsey’s sentence according to Missouri law and the Court’s order will deliver justice and provide closure,” the governor said.
Dorsey is deeply remorseful for the murders, his attorneys said. His clemency petition claimed the killings occurred while Dorsey was suffering a “drug-induced psychosis and alcohol-induced blackout” after years of substance abuse aimed at self-medicating chronic depression.
As evidence of his atonement, Dorsey and his attorneys pointed to his spotless disciplinary record and his work as a staff barber; for 11 years, Dorsey has cut the hair of staff at the Potosi Correctional Center, including chaplains, wardens and corrections officers – some of whom wrote to the governor backing his quest for clemency.
