Brian Dorsey
Brian Dorsey worked as the barber at Potosi Correctional Center, where he spent nearly two decades, and former staff said he cut the warden's hair; his cousin Jenni Gerhauser described him as loving, compassionate and helpful. More than 70 current and former corrections officers asked Governor Parson for clemency, and his attorneys said he had been rehabilitated during more than 17 years on death row. Missouri executed him by lethal injection of pentobarbital at Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre on April 9, 2024, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to halt it, and he was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. His attorneys had argued his mental state at the time of his offense, his rehabilitation and a flawed sentence, and that the execution protocol could cause severe pain, and one attorney called the execution pointless cruelty.
Cause of death, as reported: Executed by the state. His attorney called the execution pointless cruelty and argued the execution protocol could cause him severe pain and that he had been rehabilitated.
Reported by: Missouri Department of Corrections (the agency that held him); witnesses; his attorneys.
Sources (8)
- Missouri executes Brian Dorsey despite pleas from 70 prison guards
- Missouri executes convicted murderer despite prison staff's campaign to save him
- Missouri death row inmate Brian Dorsey executed after Supreme Court rejects bids to intervene
- Missouri executes Brian Dorsey by lethal injection despite attempts to alter sentence
- Missouri executes Brian Dorsey following significant legal battles
- Why witnesses could only see part of the process when Missouri executed Brian Dorsey
- Dispatch From a Missouri Execution: A Microcosm of the US Death Penalty Fight
- Map Shows States That Have Executed Death Row Inmates in 2024