Brian Dorsey, who was sentenced to death for the 2006 murder of his cousin and her husband, was executed this Tuesday in Missouri after multiple unsuccessful requests to have his sentence commuted.
The 52-year-old inmate was executed by lethal injection for the murders of Sarah Bonnie, 25, and her husband Ben Bonnie, 28, in New Bloomfield, Missouri. Dorsey pleaded guilty to shooting the couple with a shotgun after they took him in for a night to protect him from drug dealers trying to collect a debt. The Bonnie's four-year-old daughter, who was in the home at the time of the murders, was unharmed.
Dorsey's attorneys petitioned the Supreme Court to block his execution sentence from moving forward, claiming this is a "rare case where a person facing an imminent execution unquestionably is fully rehabilitated." The lawyers stressed Dorsey committed the crime "during a drug-induced psychosis." they said. “When a death-sentenced person has demonstrated that he has been rehabilitated, does the eighth amendment prohibit his execution because the penological goals of the death penalty would not be met by executing that person?”
It is the first execution since the beginning of the year in Missouri and the fifth in the country so far this year, in addition to the one canceled at the last minute on February 28 in Idaho after a medical team was unable to set an intravenous line.
Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states, while six others (Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee) have governor-imposed moratoriums.
There were 24 people executed in the United States in 2023. All of them were carried out by lethal injection.
