Brian Dorsey execution: Corrections officers rally behind Missouri man who claims lawyers had conflict

Missouri man argues his public defenders had potential conflicts of interest, as lawmakers and prison guards rally to his defence

Brian Dorsey, a Missouri man scheduled to be executed on 9 April, isn’t arguing he’s innocent.

He isn’t arguing that police hid evidence, targeted him out of racial animus, coerced a confession, or any of the other myriad problems that show up in capital appeals.

Rather, he argues that the since-discontinued state practice of paying appointed public defenders a flat fee in capital cases left him with such bad legal representation it violates the 6th Amendment, and condemned him to death after a trial in which evidence of mental health and drug issues were never given proper scrutiny.

And in another unlikely turn, a group of bipartisan lawmakers and corrections employees have joined his pleas to the governor and US Supreme Court to stop the case.

Dorsey was sentenced to death for the 23 December 2006 killing of his cousins Sarah and Ben Bonnie, who had welcomed Dorsey into their home for the night in New Bloomfield, Missouri, as he struggled with drug issues. Prosecutors also allege that after Dorsey killed them, he sexually assaulted Sarah and poured bleach on her, though these allegations weren’t fully considered in court because Dorsey pleaded guilty.

Dorsey’s lawyers say he has no memory of the crime and committed the murders in a drug-induced state of psychosis. That is, his current lawyers argue this.

According to advocates, Dorsey’s original attorneys failed to bring forward key pieces of evidence, a potential result of being paid a $12,000 flat fee each to defend him, a practice legal observers say can encourage hasty resolutions of cases to maximize value.

The practice of paying flat fees in capital cases has long been considered “improper” by the American Bar Association because of its potential to “discourage lawyers from doing more than what is minimally necessary.”

The Independent has contacted his original attorneys, Chris Slusher and Scott McBride, for comment.

Dorsey’s long-time struggles with drugs and depression, the latter for which he sought in- and outpatient treatment, were not investigated by his attorneys or presented to the jury. Instead, his defenders told him to plead guilty with no assurances regarding the death penalty.

Now, the Missouri man is arguing he did not receive his constitutional rights to adequate representation.

On 1 April, he petitioned the US Supreme Court to take up his appeal, arguing that flat fees should fall under past precedent for what’s considered illegally compromised legal assistance. Earlier this year, the Missouri man also petitioned Governor Mike Parson to convert his death sentence to life without parole.

His appeal campaign has attracted a notable group of supporters from within the criminal justice system.

In a March letter to the governor, Michael Wolff, a former Missouri Supreme Court judge who once upheld Dorsey’s death sentence, said this was one “rare cases where those of us who sit in judgment of a man convicted of capital murder got it wrong” and added that the flat fee arrangement, which Missouri has since ceased to use, “undoubtedly influenced everything.”

A group of over 70 current and former corrections officers, including those who personally know Dorsey, have also advocated on his behalf, pointing to his spotless record behind bars and longtime service as a prison barber, sometimes even cutting the hair of prison offices.

“Generally, we believe in the use of capital punishment,” the officers wrote the governor. “But we are in agreement that the death penalty is not the appropriate punishment for Brian Dorsey.”

Dorsey’s lawyers also argue he could be subject to a painful procedure to place an IV during his potential execution, a process they claim would interfere with his religious rights to receive last rites from his spiritual adviser.

Family members of the victims are split on whether Dorsey should be executed, with some supporting clemency, and others joining the attorney general of Missouri in calling for the state to go ahead with the execution.

“All of these years of pain and suffering we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel,” a group of relatives said in a statement earlier this year. “Brian will get the justice that Sarah and Ben have deserved for so long.”

The governor, a former sheriff who hasn’t blocked an execution since taking office in 2018, is still reviewing the clemency request, a spokesperson told the Associated Press on Friday.

Missouri executes more people than almost all other US states. The state has executed 97 people since 1976, trailing only Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Florida, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Last year, it was one of only five states to carry out executions, killing four people.

Lawmakers are pushing to both end and expand the death penalty in the state.

In January, a group of Republicans filed legislation to abolish capital punishment.

“I think morally, I feel obligated,” Rep Chad Perkins, a Republican from Bowling Green, said of the effort. “Anyone who says they’re pro-life should feel a little conflicted on this topic — because if you’re pro-life then I think you’ve got to look at it and say you’re that way from the beginning to the very end.”

Meanwhile, another GOP group is pushing to expand the list of crimes punishable by death to include child sex trafficking and statutory rape.

”What’s more evil than taking the innocence of the child during the act of a rape? Children are in large part defenseless and an act such as rape can kill the child emotionally,” Senator Mike Moon, a sponsor of the bill, said in March. “And so I believe a just consequence, after a reasonable opportunity for defense, is death.”