A Missouri death row inmate was executed last Tuesday after his last-minute appeals to the US Supreme Court and Governor Mike Parson failed, the Associated Press reported.
Brian Dorsey, who was convicted in the December 2006 murders of his cousin Sarah Bonnie and her husband Ben, was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. on April 9 at the state prison in Bonne Terre after receiving an injection of pentobarbital, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.
The 52-year-old Dorsey was executed just hours after the Supreme Court rejected two final appeals without comment. Dorsey’s attorneys had urged the Court to intervene, arguing that the inmate had been rehabilitated. They also argued that the flat fee Dorsey paid to his public defenders led them to rush the case, resulting in Dorsey accepting a guilty plea that did not include sparing him from the death penalty.
Governor Parson on April 8 denied a request for clemency that was signed by 72 former and current corrections officers asking him to commute Dorsey’s sentence to life without parole. Parson, who has never granted clemency to a death row inmate in six years, said in a statement said Dorsey repaid the family that took him into their home “with cruelty, inhumane violence, and murder.”
In his final written statement, Dorsey expressed guilt and shame for the killings.
According to prosecutors, Dorsey called his cousin Sarah on December 23, 2006, to ask for money to pay two drug dealers who were in his Jefferson City apartment.
A short time later Dorsey went to the Bonnies’ home near New Bloomfield, and after Sarah and Ben went to bed that night, he went into the garage to retrieve a shotgun and shot them both before raping his cousin’s body. He then stole several items which he tried to use to pay off the drug debt.
The following day, Sarah’s parents went to check on the family after they failed to show up for a holiday gathering. When they arrived, they found the Bonnies’ 4-year-old daughter watching TV. She told them her mother wouldn’t wake up.
Dorsey surrendered to the police two days later.
