ST. LOUIS — The Missouri Department of Corrections is taking steps to reduce Brian Dorsey’s risk of suffering during his execution, scheduled for Tuesday, according to a settlement between the state and Dorsey’s attorneys.
The settlement filed Saturday ends a federal lawsuit that said Dorsey could face immense pain if he had to undergo a so-called cutdown procedure to find a suitable vein for injection of the deadly dose of pentobarbital. Dorsey, 52, is awaiting execution for killing his cousin and her husband in 2006.
Dorsey is described as obese, has diabetes and is a former intravenous drug user — all factors that could make it more difficult to find a vein for injection, his lawyers say. A cutdown procedure involves an incision that may be several inches wide, then using tweezers to pull the tissue apart to access a vein.
Missouri’s execution protocol does not include a provision for narcotics. Attorneys for Dorsey had argued that without local anesthesia, Dorsey could be in so much pain that it would interfere with his right to religious freedom in his final moments by preventing him from having meaningful interactions with his spiritual advisor, including performing the final rituals.
The settlement does not specify what specific changes the state has approved or whether sedatives would be used if a tapering procedure is necessary. Messages were left Monday with the corrections department and the Missouri attorney general’s office.
Arin Brenner, an attorney for Dorsey, said the settlement is not public and declined to discuss specific details.
“We have received sufficient assurances that adequate pain relief will be provided,” Brenner said in an email Monday.
Dorsey, formerly of Jefferson City, was convicted of killing Sarah and Ben Bonnie on Dec. 23, 2006, at their home near New Bloomfield. Prosecutors said Dorsey had called Sarah Bonnie earlier that day to borrow money to pay two drug dealers who were at his apartment.
Dorsey went to the Bonnies’ house that evening. 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.
Sarah Bonnie’s parents found the bodies the next day. The couple’s four-year-old daughter was unharmed.
Attorneys for Dorsey said he was suffering from drug-induced psychosis at the time of the killings. He was exonerated in prison, they said, and a pardon petition to Republican Gov. Mike Parson focuses on Dorsey’s nearly spotless record of good conduct.
Among those urging Parson to commute Dorsey’s sentence to life in prison are 72 current and former prison officials. “The Brian I’ve known for years can’t hurt anyone,” one officer wrote. “The Brian I know does not deserve to be executed.”
Dorsey’s rehabilitation is also the focus of a petition filed Sunday with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Another appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court centers on the $12,000 lump sum paid to Dorsey’s court-appointed trial attorneys. She states that with the fixed fee the lawyers had a financial incentive to resolve the case quickly. They encouraged Dorsey to plead guilty, but without demanding that prosecutors agree to life in prison instead of the death penalty.
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 denied an appeal of his death sentence in 2009. Now, he says, that decision was wrong.
“Missouri Public Defenders are now opting out of the fixed defense fee, in recognition of the professional standard that such an arrangement presents the attorney with an inherent financial conflict of interest,” Wolff wrote.