Brian Dorsey was executed by the state of Missouri less than 10 hours after the governor and the U.S. Supreme Court denied him clemency.
The 52-year-old man died after a single-dose injection of the sedative pentobarbital at Bonne Terre State Prison at 6:11 p.m. on Tuesday.
It came after Dorsey issued a final statement Tuesday morning, where he said, “Words cannot contain the fair weight of my guilt and shame.”
He was also served his final meal, which included two double bacon cheeseburgers, two portions of chicken tenders, two large portions of fries and a pizza with sausage, pepperoni, onion, mushrooms and extra cheese, according to the state department. of corrections.
Dorsey shot his cousin Sarah and her husband Benjamin Bonnie, 28, in their Missouri home in 2006.
Republican Gov. Mike Parson denied clemency to Dorsey despite a petition that obtained statements from 72 current and former corrections officials attesting that he had been reformed.
The US Supreme Court also refused to stop him after dismissing two separate appeals.
Both appeals were dismissed without comment. One cited Dorsey’s record of good behavior since his incarceration and said he should not be executed because he has been rehabilitated.
The other appeal said his life should be spared because his trial attorneys had a conflict of interest.
The two public defenders were paid a flat fee of $12,000 that provided them no incentive to spend time on their case, according to the appeal.
On their recommendation, Dorsey pleaded guilty despite failing to reach an agreement with prosecutors that would spare him the death penalty.
Dorsey killed her cousin and her husband inside their central Missouri home two days before Christmas in 2006, leaving her 4-year-old daughter alone in the house.
Kirk Henderson, one of Dorsey’s attorneys, said Dorsey “has spent every day of the last 18 years trying to make up for the single act of violence” he committed in 2006.
Dorsey shot Sarah and Benjamin Bonnie to death in their bed while he was with the couple, before stealing their belongings and attempting to sell them.
Gov. Mike Parson on Monday rejected the clemency request that would have saved Dorsey’s life. The request included correspondence from current and former corrections officials, as well as a retired state Supreme Court justice, stating that the killer was reformed.
“Executing Brian Dorsey is pointless cruelty, an exercise of state power that serves no legitimate penological purpose,” Henderson said in a statement.
A small number of protesters gathered shortly before the execution in an area near the prison.
Dorsey would be the first person executed in Missouri this year after four executions in 2023.
Another man, David Hosieris scheduled for execution on June 11 for the murder of a Jefferson City woman in 2009. Nationally, four men have been executed so far in 2024: one each in Alabama, Texas, Georgia and Oklahoma.
Dorsey, 52, formerly of Jefferson CityHe was convicted of killing Sarah and Ben Bonnie on December 23, 2006 at their home near New Bloomfield.
Prosecutors said that that same day, Dorsey called Sarah Bonnie to borrow money to pay off two drug dealers who were at her apartment.
Dorsey went to the Bonnie house that night. After they went to bed, Dorsey took a shotgun from the garage and killed them both before sexually assaulting Sarah Bonnie’s body, prosecutors said.
“The pain Dorsey caused others can never be rectified, but carrying out Dorsey’s sentence in accordance with Missouri law and the Court’s order will do justice and provide closure,” the politician concluded, likely sealing the fate of the scam.
Former Missouri Supreme Court Justice Michael Wolff (pictured) and 72 current and former corrections officials fought to save Dorsey’s life, claiming he had been born again behind bars. Wolff was the one who handed down the death sentence in 2009, but recently said it was a mistake.
Police said Dorsey stole several items from the home and tried to pay off a drug debt with some of the stolen property.
One day after the murders, Sarah Bonnie’s parents went to see the Bonnies after they didn’t show up for a family reunion.
They found the couple’s 4-year-old daughter on the couch watching television. She told her grandparents that her mother ‘won’t wake up.’
Dorsey turned himself in to police three days after the murders.
Dorsey’s lawyers said he had suffered drug-induced psychosis at the time of the crime. In prison he has become clean, they said.
Seventy-two prison officials endorsed his rehabilitation in the petition for clemency.
“The Brian I have known for years could not hurt anyone,” one of them wrote in the petition for clemency. “The Brian I know does not deserve to be executed.”
In a letter to Parson as part of the clemency petition, former Missouri Supreme Court Justice Michael Wolff wrote that he was on the court when it dismissed an appeal of his death sentence in 2009. He said he now knows that the decision was wrong.
“Missouri public defenders now do not use flat fee defense in recognition of the professional standard that such an arrangement gives the attorney an inherent financial conflict of interest,” Wolff wrote.
Dorsey’s execution raised new concerns about Missouri’s single-drug protocol, which does not include any provision for the use of anesthetics. Dorsey’s attorneys describe him as obese, diabetic and a former intravenous drug user, all factors that could have made it difficult to obtain a vein to inject the lethal drug.
When this happens, a reduction procedure is sometimes necessary.
A reduction involves an incision and then using forceps to remove tissue from an interior vein.
A federal lawsuit on Dorsey’s behalf argued that without a local anesthetic he would suffer so much pain that it would impede his right to religious freedom by preventing him from having meaningful interaction with his spiritual advisor, including administering last rites.
A settlement was reached Saturday in which the state took unspecified steps to limit the risk of extreme pain.
The agreement does not detail specific changes agreed to by the state, including whether anesthetics would be available.