With less than a week until Brian Dorsey is scheduled to be executed in Missouri for the 2006 killings of his cousin and her husband, an effort is underway to have the 52-year-old’s capital sentence commuted to life without parole. More than 150 people have called on Gov. Mike Parson to commute Dorsey’s punishment, including more than 70 current and former prison workers, many of whom got to know Dorsey behind bars, Republican state representatives, jurors and even the appeals judge who upheld Dorsey’s conviction and death sentence in 2009, reports The Guardian. “In the case of Brian Dorsey, I now believe this is the rare case where we got it wrong,” wrote retired Supreme Court Justice Michael Wolff. “I am so convinced of our error that I have asked Governor Parson to grant clemency to Mr Dorsey.”
If Dorsey is executed, "it will dishonor our system of justice,” Wolff added, arguing that judges were unaware of how compromised Dorsey’s defense lawyers had been. He said that the state public defender system that paid Dorsey’s lawyers a flat fee meant that the defendant hadn’t been adequately represented. Timothy Lancaster, a former corrections officersi, wrote that from his “perspective after decades in corrections, I do not hesitate to say that executing Brian Dorsey would be a pointless cruelty." Dozens of former and current Missouri department of corrections officers and prison staffers have written to Parson, saying, “We are part of the law enforcement community who believe in law and order. 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’s current lawyers say he was in a drug-induced psychosis at the time of the killings. Parson has never granted a request for clemency,. Andrew Bailey, the Missouri attorney general, said in a statement that his office wanted to enforce the laws as written, while also noting that Dorsey sexually assaulted his cousin and there were other aggravating factors.