An American man sentenced to death for the 2006 murders of his cousin and her husband was executed on Tuesday (9/4) in the central US state of Missouri, despite calls from various quarters for leniency and a commutation of the sentence.
Brian Dorsey, 52, was executed by lethal injection. He was pronounced dead at 18:11 (local time; 02:11 Greek time).
This is the first execution this year in Missouri and the fifth in the USA, after the one that was postponed in extremis on February 28 in the state of Idaho (northwest), as the lethal solution could not be administered within the time limit provided by the legislation.
The timeline of the conviction
Brian Dorsey had pleaded guilty to the December 23, 2006, in-bed shooting deaths of his cousin and her husband.
The couple, Sarah and Ben Bonney, were hosting him overnight at their home when two drug dealers broke into his own home to demand money, documents said. The couple’s young daughter, 4 years old, was found safe.
In their latest appeal to the federal Supreme Court, in which they asked for a stay of execution and a review of the sentence, the defense attorneys emphasized that this was a “rare case in which a person awaiting his imminent execution has fully repented”, as well as that he committed the murders because of a “drug-induced psychosis” he had taken.
They also pointed to a petition signed by more than 70 guards of the penitentiary where he was held, who called for the sentence of the exemplary prisoner, according to them, to be changed to life imprisonment. A former chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, like five of the jurors in his trial, also asked for leniency in Brian Dorsey’s case.
Executions in 2023
In total, 24 executions took place in the US last year, all using lethal chemical injections.
The death penalty has been abandoned in 23 of the 50 US states. Another six (Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee) implement moratoriums on executions, by decisions of their governors.
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