The court's decision paves the way for Brian Dorsey to be executed in April as scheduled.
Dorsey is today a model inmate (as the Post-Dispatch's Tony Messenger has written, he's received support for his efforts to be saved from execution from no less than 60 employees of the Potosi Correctional Center, where he is incarcerated and works as a barber). But the crime that he was found guilty of was shocking in its brutality.
Prosecutors say Dorsey killed his cousin Sarah Bonnie on December 23, 2006, and then sexually violated her corpse. He also killed her husband Ben Bonnie and left both of their bodies locked in a bedroom before stealing from them and fleeing their house. It wasn't until another family member checked on the couple a day later that they found the couple's four-year-old daughter Jade in another part of the home, oblivious to the carnage behind her parents' bedroom door.
Dorsey turned himself in for the slaying on the day after Christmas. Two years later, he pled guilty at trial. He has said he doesn't remember committing the crime due to being drunk and withdrawing from crack cocaine, but has never challenged allegations that he did it.
COURTESY JACOB BONNIE
Ben Bonnie, Sarah Bonnie and their daughter Jade, who was four at the time of her parents' murder.
Dorsey's habeas plea, filed last December, asked the Missouri Supreme Court to halt his execution. He argued that the flat fee he paid his lawyers gave them a conflict of interest in that they were inclined to act swiftly rather than explore all options. He also argued that because he was under the influence of drugs, he couldn't be guilty of the deliberation required in a first-degree murder charge. He also sought to have his sentence converted to life in prison without parole, arguing that his "unblemished prison record for more than 17 years on death row" would make his execution "cruel and unusual punishment."
The court flatly rejected those arguments.
In a unanimous opinion, Justice W. Brent Powell writes, "Neither Dorsey nor his experts are able to claim with any certainty that he was actually experiencing psychosis at the time of the murders. This evidence does not clearly and convincingly persuade the Court that Dorsey lacked the ability to deliberate when weighed against the evidence showing the murders were premeditated.
"The State presented significant evidence of Dorsey’s deliberation, including that Dorsey retrieved the unloaded single-shot shotgun from the shop, loaded the shotgun to shoot [Sarah Bonnie], emptied the chamber, reloaded the shotgun to shoot [her spouse], poured bleach on [Sarah Bonnie's] body to cover up evidence of the rape, locked the bedroom door, stole their property to sell, turned himself in to the police, and identified himself as the one the police needed to talk to about the murders."
Powell also notes that Dorsey previously raised the same argument about having ineffective lawyers, and it was previously rejected by a different court. "The Court found that funds independent of counsel’s flat fee were available as needed and counsel’s actions were based on reasonable trial strategy and not finances." Powells adds that Dorsey should raise the idea of his unblemished record with Governor Mike Parson, not the court.
Barring the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court, which would be extremely unusual, Dorsey will be executed on April 9.
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