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Jenni Gerhauser has lots of them. Growing up in the Cedar City area, just across the Missouri River from Jefferson City, she remembers being close to all her cousins. She figured most families were like that.

“Cousins were more like siblings,� she says. “We got together whenever we could.�

One of her cousins was Sarah Bonnie, who lived in New Bloomfield with her husband, Ben.

“I loved her,� Gerhauser says. “I loved her dearly.�

Her favorite cousin was — and still is — Brian Dorsey.

“We were very close, only three weeks apart in age,� she says. “Brian has always been one of my favorite people. He is the brother I always wished I had.�

Dorsey dropped out of high school a few weeks before graduating. That’s when Gerhauser, who had moved to Springfield with her family, started to realize something was troubling her cousin. He was depressed and had turned to drugs.

Two days before Christmas in 2006, Dorsey, in a cocaine- and alcohol-induced stupor, killed his cousin Sarah and her husband, Ben. The couple had offered Dorsey a home as safe refuge. He woke up in the middle of the night and killed them. It was a brutal slaying.

On Tuesday, Dorsey is scheduled to be put to death by the state of Missouri. His cousin Jenni is trying to save his life. She’s hardly alone. As I wrote in January, Dorsey has a chorus of supporters urging Gov. Mike Parson to spare his life and commute his sentence from death to life in prison. His is not like some other death penalty cases, where there are serious questions about guilt.

Dorsey is guilty. He knows it. He killed his cousin and her husband. But a variety of factors — from a poor effort and investigation by contracted public defenders who were paid a flat fee, to the support of dozens of corrections workers who see Dorsey’s humanity — led to a coalition of parties seeking to spare his life.

Dorsey’s attorneys, including Megan Crane, co-director of the nonprofit , have so far struck out on most of their legal Hail Mary passes. There is a request pending for the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the issue of the which Missouri has since abandoned and other states have found unconstitutional.

Dorsey’s best bet to live out his remaining years in prison and return to his job as the Potosi Correctional Center barber is for Parson to show the ultimate act of mercy and commute Dorsey’s sentence.

Gerhauser hopes the email she sent her cousin Thursday night won’t be the last time she tells him about the daily events of her life. I asked her how she was preparing for the possibility that Dorsey would die this week.

“I’m not sure I know how to put those emotions into words,� she said. “These past few weeks have been so much harder, so much stressful than I imagined they would be. I already lost one cousin. I can’t bear to lose another. It’s frustrating to me that all this goodness in him doesn’t carry any weight.�

As a cousin to both the victims and the man who killed them, Gerhauser is in the unique spot of feeling like she’s taking sides. She remembers the family tension when the murders happened nearly two decades ago. But she’s long been an advocate for Dorsey, who has spent his time in prison becoming the man that drugs and mental health issues almost stopped him from becoming.

Gerhauser sees that her cousin, a joy to be around as a child, has become that same sort of adult — to other inmates in prison, and the guards who watch over them.

“This world needs all the good it can get, especially if it’s found in the walls of a prison. He’s a fantastic example for any other inmates around him,� Gerhauser says. “All of my life I’ve heard about the scales of justice, but when you can have your life taken away from you for the one bad moment in your life without balancing out the good, that’s not scales. That’s a shovel, and it’s about to bury my cousin.�