U.S. CARRIES OUT SECOND EXECUTION IN TWO DAYS
The Trump administration continued its unprecedented series of post-election federal executions Friday by putting to death a Louisiana truck driver who severely abused his 2-yearold daughter for weeks in 2002, then killed her by slamming her head against a truck’s windows and dashboard.
Alfred Bourgeois, 56, was pronounced dead at 5:21 p.m. Pacific time after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.
His lawyers argued Bourgeois had an IQ that puts him in the intellectually disabled category, saying that should have made him ineligible for the death penalty under federal law. Victor J. Abreu, said it was “shameful” to execute his client “without fair consideration of his intellectual disability.”
In his last words, Bourgeois offered no apology and instead struck a deeply defiant tone, insisting that he neither killed nor sexually abused his baby girl. “I ask God to forgive all those who plotted and schemed against me, and planted false evidence.” And he added: “I did not commit this crime.”
Bourgeois was the 10th federal death-row inmate put to death since federal executions resumed under President Donald Trump in July after a 17-year hiatus. He was the second federal prisoner executed this week, with three more executions planned in January.
Bourgeois met with his spiritual adviser Friday as he sought to come to terms with the possibility of dying, and he was also praying, another one of his lawyers, Shawn Nolan, told The Associated Press just hours before the execution.
“He certainly doesn’t want to die — and it’s harder for him to grasp being killed by the federal government. But he does get it that this is bad.”
The attorney added: “He’s praying for redemption.”
Bourgeois took up drawing in prison, including doing renditions of members of his legal team. Nolan said he hasn’t been a troublemaker on death row and has a good disciplinary record.
The last time the number of civilians executed federally was in the double digits in a year was under President Grover Cleveland, with 14 in 1896.
The series of executions under Trump since Election Day, the first in late November, is also the first time in more than 130 years that federal executions have occurred during a lame-duck period. Cleveland also was the last president to do that.
Several appeals courts have concluded that neither evidence nor criminal law on intellectual disability support the claims by Bourgeois’ legal team.
On Thursday, Brandon Bernard was put to death for his part in a 1999 killing of a religious couple from Iowa after he and other teenage members of a gang abducted and robbed Todd and Stacie Bagley in Texas. Bernard, who was 18 at the time of the killings, was a rare execution of a person who was in his teens when his crime was committed.