Dorsey wants death penalty removed

The Missouri Supreme Court should erase Brian Dorsey's death penalty, his lawyer wrote last week, because the Boone County jury that recommended Dorsey's execution "did not find beyond a reasonable doubt, that the mitigating circumstances in his case were insufficient to outweigh the aggravating circumstances."

Dorsey, now 45, has been on death row at the Potosi Correctional Center since 2008, sentenced for killing his cousin, Sarah Bonnie, and her husband, Benjamin Bonnie, at their rural New Bloomfield home Dec. 24, 2006.

Dorsey, from Jefferson City, pleaded guilty to the murders in March 2008, and the jury was empaneled to determine his sentence.

In August 2008, the jury determined Dorsey had planned the murders and, also, had raped Sarah.

The Supreme Court twice has upheld Dorsey's conviction and sentences for the two murders - which occurred after the Bonnies had helped Dorsey, then 35, get drug dealers out of his home earlier on the day they were killed.

Family members found the couple's bodies after they didn't show up, as expected, for a family holiday gathering.

Investigators said their daughter, 4, was in the home at the time, but unharmed.

Attorney Rebecca E. Woodman, of Lenexa, Kansas, argued in her motion for a writ of habeas corpus that Missouri law requires a jury to find the circumstances supporting a death penalty finding outweigh the favorable, or mitigating, evidence that would support a sentence other than the death penalty.

Woodman noted a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling - eight years after the jury heard Dorsey's case - "requires that a jury must make these factual findings before imposing a death sentence."

And, she reminded the Supreme Court that it "has already afforded retroactive application of new law concerning the right to fact-finding by a jury."

On Feb. 24, Woodman wrote, Dorsey asked the state Supreme Court to withdraw its execution mandate, "arguing that Missouri's capital sentencing scheme violates" the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as Hurst v. Florida.

Woodman pointed to the state Supreme Court's 2010 decision upholding Dorsey's conviction and death sentences.

"This Court rejected Mr. Dorsey's constitutional challenge to the statute," she wrote in her 13-page motion. "In a holding that is contrary to 'Hurst,' this Court found 'the jury's "weighing" of aggravating and mitigating evidence is not subject to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, because it is not a factual finding that increases the potential range of punishment."

Although the Supreme Court rejected Dorsey's motion in March, Woodman wrote, it said Dorsey still could file a writ for habeas corpus.

And that's what her new motion does.

Because of the federal Supreme Court's ruling last year, Woodman said, the state court's only alternative is to drop the death sentence and order Dorsey to serve life in prison, instead.

Woodman's motion seeking elimination of Dorsey's death sentence was filed Wednesday.

The court gave no indication when it may decide to accept, or reject, the case.