Callaway County killer gets execution date

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

A man convicted in 2008 of the murders of a New Bloomfield couple is set to be executed in April.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked the Missouri Supreme Court in February to set an execution date for Brian Dorsey. Dorsey was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the killing of his cousin, Sarah Bonnie, and her husband, Ben, on Dec. 23, 2006.

He was convicted on a change of venue in Boone County.

Dorsey has unsuccessfully appealed his sentence and the court ordered that he be executed on April 9.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Dorsey's request to overturn his death sentence in February. Dorsey claimed his lawyers did not properly investigate factors that might have convinced a jury to give him a life sentence in prison.

Dorsey's previous appeals argued that his ongoing drug addiction and depression would have made it impossible for him to have deliberately killed the Bonnies.