KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Dozens of Missouri Department of Corrections staff members are urging Gov. Mike Parson to grant clemency to a man scheduled to die in April for killing his cousin and her husband, with a former warden calling him a “model inmate.”
Sixty corrections officers and other staff members signed onto a letter to the Republican governor in support of Brian Dorsey, the Kansas City Star reported Monday. The letter says Dorsey, 51, “has stayed out of trouble, never gotten himself into any situations, and been respectful of us and of his fellow inmates.” It says he is housed in an “honor dorm” at the Potosi Correctional Center, a housing area for inmates with good conduct.
“We are part of the law enforcement community who believe in law and order,” the group wrote in the letter urging Parson to commute the sentence to life without parole. “Generally, we believe in the use of capital punishment. But we are in agreement that the death penalty is not the appropriate punishment for Brian Dorsey.”
Dorsey was convicted in the 2006 killings of his cousin, Sarah Bonnie, and her husband, Ben Bonnie, in the central Missouri town of New Bloomfield. His scheduled execution on April 9 would be the first in Missouri this year after four were carried out in 2023.
