WHAT WE'RE READING
The morning read for Monday, April 8
By Ellena Erskine
on Apr 8, 2024 at 10:09 am

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Monday morning read:

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Flat-Fee Representation Fuels Man’s Bid To Avoid Execution (Marco Poggio, Law360)

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Flat-Fee Representation Fuels Man's Bid To Avoid Execution

By Marco Poggio | April 5, 2024, 7:04 PM EDT

As he faced accusations in Missouri of murdering his cousin and her husband in 2006, the only thing that stood between Brian Joseph Dorsey and the death penalty were two state-appointed attorneys who were each paid a $12,000 flat fee to defend him at trial. ,,, But that low-cost engagement meant doom for Dorsey, he now argues.


Brian J. Dorsey, who was convicted of killing his cousin and her husband, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to put off his execution looming on April 9. (Courtesy of Jeremy Weis)

In a petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on April 1, Dorsey said that his lawyers, Scott T. McBride and Christopher A. Slusher, failed to investigate mitigating factors such as Dorsey's mental illness and drug abuse, and instead convinced him to plead guilty to first-degree murder charges without getting assurances from prosecutors that they wouldn't seek the death penalty.

Based on the quality of the legal representation he received and the flat-fee arrangement, Dorsey is urging the justices for a reprieve from his lethal injection, which is scheduled for April 9 at 6 p.m. CT. Meanwhile, Missouri Gov. Michael L. Parson is considering a separate petition for clemency Dorsey filed last month.

Federal public defenders representing Dorsey asked the justices to issue a stay and argued in a certiorari petition that the flat-fee structure created a conflict of interest — a financial incentive for his trial attorneys to provide constitutionally deficient representation. ... "The way that Mr. Dorsey ended up on death row is particularly egregious," Assistant Federal Public Defender Arin Melissa Brenner told Law360. "It's an indictment of the criminal justice system to execute a man whose attorneys were clearly laboring under a conflict of interest ... It so clearly affected his representation. It's a travesty."

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