'I have peace in my heart,' inmate says before his Missouri execution

April 9 (UPI) -- Missouri went forward with Tuesday's scheduled execution of Brian Dorsey, who was convicted of murdering his cousin and her husband in 2006, after being denied clemency this week despite calls from prison guards to spare Dorsey's life.

Dorsey, age 52, was executed Tuesday night by lethal injection of pentobarbital in what was Missouri's first execution of 2024. The state conducted four executions in 2023.

Dorsey was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. local time at Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center -- a 2,684-bed prison facility in Bonne Terre, an hour south of St. Louis.

"I have peace in my heart, in large part because of you, and I thank you," Dorsey wrote to family in his final statement. "To all those on all sides of this sentence, I carry no ill will or anger, only acceptance and understanding."

"Words cannot hold the just weight of my guilt and shame," he wrote in his last note in his own hand.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said in a statement Monday denying Dorsey clemency that he "punished his loving family for helping him in a time of need."

Dorsey pleaded guilty to killing his cousin, Sarah Bonnie, and her husband, Ben Bonnie, during the night of Dec. 23, 2006, after they rescued him from drug dealers who were trying to collect debts. According to court filings, Dorsey shot the couple with their own shotgun, while their 4-year-old daughter was in the home. Prosecutors then accused Dorsey of sexually assaulting his cousin. He also stole jewelry and their car to repay his drug debts.

"His cousins invited him into their home, where he was surrounded by family and friends, then gave him a place to stay. Dorsey repaid them with cruelty, inhumane violence and murder," the Republican governor said Monday in denying Dorsey clemency.

The bodies were discovered by Sarah Bonnie's parents after the couple failed to show up for a Christmas Eve gathering. The couple's 4-year-old daughter was sitting on the couch when they arrived, and told her grandparents she could not wake up her parents.

The Missouri Supreme Court denied Dorsey's appeals and issued an execution warrant in December. Challenges were also filed in federal court, but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear them.

On Monday, Parson denied clemency, as the governor's office stated "numerous jurors and courts have determined the judgment Dorsey received is an appropriate and legal sentence for his heinous crimes."

"If anyone deserves mercy, surely it is Brian, who has been fully rehabilitated and whose death sentence was so flawed that five of his jurors believe he should not be executed," Dorsey's defense attorney Kirk Henderson said in his criticism of the state's first execution so far this year.

"Executing Brian Dorsey is a pointless cruelty, an exercise of the state's power that serves no legitimate penological purpose," Henderson added.

Dorsey was sentenced to death and has spent 17 years behind bars. His attorneys requested clemency after more than 70 corrections officers said Dorsey was remorseful and had been rehabilitated. They argued Dorsey was in a drug-induced psychosis the night he committed the killings.

"The correctional staff -- who know Mr. Dorsey best at this point, and who know what real rehabilitation and genuine remorse look like because of their firsthand experience with and broad basis for comparison with other prisoners -- consistently attest to Mr. Dorsey's wholesale rehabilitation, his genuine remorse and ultimately his redemption."

Ahead of Dorsey's execution, a retired Missouri Department of Corrections officer said he knew Dorsey "for many years, and I can say without hesitation that he was completely rehabilitated," said Tim Lancaster, who joined others including members of Dorsey's own family in trying to stop Tuesday's successful execution.

"We are not so blinded by our love for him that we don't understand that he was convicted of committing a terrible crime against someone we loved just as deeply as we do Brian, but nor are we capable of rewriting history to convince ourselves that Brian still isn't the same loving, compassionate, helpful person he always was," Jenni Gerhauser, a cousin of Dorsey's victim said, adding that contemporary justice "failed Brian."

But the governor said "The pain Dorsey brought to others can never be rectified, but carrying out Dorsey's sentence according to Missouri law and the court's order will deliver justice and provide closure."