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The Missouri Supreme Court rejected a stay of execution bid for a death row inmate condemned to die next week – despite his lawyer’s warnings that he faces state-sanctioned surgery without anesthesia.”
Brian Dorsey, 52, is set to be executed on Tuesday for murdering his cousin and her husband in 2006.
In their appeals, Dorsey’s attorneys argued that their client risks being put to death using the “cutdown procedure,” in which officials make a large incision and use forceps to tear away tissue in order to expose a vein for a lethal pentobarbital injection.
Missouri law calls for the insertion of primary and intravenous lines for the fatal injection, but does not provide guidance on how far the execution team can go in order to find a vein.
Independent observers do not see the IV line inserted, so it is completely unknown how often the procedure may have been used in the past.
Because Dorsey is obese, diabetic, and a former IV drug user, there is a higher likelihood that the execution team will not be able to find a suitable vein without the invasive procedure, his attorneys argued.
“It’s surgery,” federal public Arin Brenner said of the cutdown procedure. “It would be surgery without anesthesia.”
Attorney General Andrew Baile’s office, however, argued in a statement that cutdowns “are rarely, if ever, used under Missouri’s execution protocol.”
“And in the event that a cut-down procedure were necessary, medical personnel have access to pain relieving medications,” the response insisted.
“It is extremely painful. Even if given an oral pain relief or an opioid, that will not relieve the pain,” said Megan Crane, another of Dorsey’s attorney’s.
If the cutdown procedure is needed, Crane added, Dorsey should be given a local anesthetic.
The cutdown procedure violates Dorsey’s constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment, his lawyers said.
The surgery would also preclude him from having meaningful access to his spiritual advisor, including the dispensation of last rites.
Dorsey’s attorneys also said that over 70 corrections officers had come forward to ask Gov. Mike Parson to grant him, as had community leaders, KOMU 8 reported.
The person Parson wants to put in charge of the Department of Corrections, the lawyers added, has also not yet been confirmed by the Senate, and thus causes Dorsey to “face imminent harm,” the outlet added.
The head of the Department of Corrections oversees all execution procedures.
Dorsey’s motion for a stay of execution, however, “failed to satisfy the requirements necessary” to pause the process, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled on Friday, KOMU 8 said.
With Post wires