Brian Dorsey set for Missouri execution despite groundswell of support

Dorsey’s legal team and his supporters had argued that it would be wrong to execute Dorsey because he has been rehabilitated.

“Gov. Parson has chosen to ignore the wealth of information before him showing that Brian Dorsey is uniquely deserving of mercy,” wrote Dorsey’s attorney Megan Crane.

• Dorsey — who is being held at Potosi Correctional Center in Washington County, Mo. — is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. local time Tuesday.
• His execution warrant was issued Dec. 13, 2023, for shooting and killing the two family members with a shotgun.
• He has “unprecedented” written support of more than 70 prison staff members, including the former warden, who say he should not be executed, his attorneys wrote. He has had a pristine disciplinary record during his 17 years on death row, they added.
• Family members argued both for and against Dorsey’s clemency. A statement from Sarah Bonnie’s side of the family given to local television station KOMU argued Dorsey should receive no reprieve because the couple’s daughter never knew her parents. Meanwhile, video provided by Dorsey’s attorneys show cousins of his saying they want his life spared.

Two days before Christmas 2006, Dorsey’s cousin Sarah Bonnie and her husband, Ben Bonnie, took in Dorsey because a pair of drug dealers were threatening him to collect on his drug debt, according to a news release from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

Dorsey was in a “psychotic state” from not sleeping for 72 hours while on a crack bender, according to his attorneys. That night, prosecutors said, Dorsey shot the couple with their own shotgun in their bed. They left behind a 4-year-old daughter.

Prosecutors said Dorsey took a cellphone, jewelry, two firearms and a copy of “Bambi II” belonging to the daughter of the victims. He took the items to repay his drug debt, according to court records filed by prosecutors.

When he learned police were looking for him, he turned himself in and cooperated, his attorneys wrote.

Dorsey’s current attorneys argued that their client received ineffective counsel at his trial.

The trial attorneys conducted no investigation, his current attorneys wrote, adding that the trial attorneys “obtained nothing for Mr. Dorsey in exchange for his guilty plea.”

They say the original attorneys did not disclose that Dorsey was in a drug-induced psychosis. The current attorneys argue that part of the reason may be financial: The trial attorneys received a flat fee of $12,000 — a practice Mary Fox, director of the Missouri State Public Defender System, said discourages thorough work.

Fox wrote a letter to the courts arguing that the flat fee is an issue in this case because it has since been recognized as a violation of American Bar Association guidelines and Missouri Rules of Professional Conduct.

“Missouri State Public Defender acknowledges the prevalence of unconstitutional and ineffective assistance of counsel in death penalty flat fee cases,” she wrote.

Three years before the crime, the American Bar Association wrote that “counsel in death penalty cases should be fully compensated at a rate that is commensurate with the provision of high quality legal representation and reflects the extraordinary responsibilities inherent in death penalty representation.”

Dorsey was diagnosed with major depression disorder when he was young, his attorneys wrote, and medication did not help him. He later began self-mediating with crack cocaine when he was a teenager, according to his attorneys.

An open question in this case is whether the Eighth Amendment protects from execution people who have been rehabilitated, his attorneys argued in their latest attempt to stay the execution.

“Because of Mr. Dorsey’s unsurpassed record on Missouri’s death row, this case presents the best vehicle for the Court to take up this question,” his attorneys wrote.

• Dorsey has been called a model inmate, one who lives in the honor dorm and works as the prison’s barber. He gives haircuts to the prison guards, Dorsey’s attorneys wrote.
• Retired warden Troy Steele, who headed the Potosi Correctional Center, wrote of Dorsey that “his behavior is reported as exceptional, having received no reports for any type of misconduct.” He wrote that Dorsey has achieved the “highest levels of respect and confidence” from staff in the prison.
• A group of more than 70 corrections staff members at the prison wrote a letter to Parson, Missouri’s governor, in which they said they are usually in favor of the death penalty but “are in agreement that the death penalty is not the appropriate punishment for Brian Dorsey,” according to a court filing. They said they know he was convicted of murder, but that’s not the Brian “they know.”
• “Brian has spent every day of his time in prison trying to make amends for his crime, and dozens of correctional officers have attested to his remorse, transformation, and commitment to service,” said Crane, his attorney. “Brian’s unprecedented support, and his irrefutable evidence of redemption, are precisely the circumstances for which clemency is designed. Allowing Brian to be executed despite this truth is devastating.”

Kim Bellware contributed to this report.