Trump administration puts truck driver to death
Louisiana man was convicted of killing daughter
Terre Haute, Ind. The Trump administration continued its unprecedented series of postelection federal executions Friday by putting to death a Louisiana truck driver who severely abused his 2-year-old 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 8:21 p.m. Eastern 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.
As the lethal injection of pentobarbital began flowing through IVS in both of his arms, Bourgeois tilted his head to the side to look at his spiritual adviser standing in a corner of the death chamber clutching a small Bible. Bourgeois gave him a thumbs up sign, and his spiritual adviser raised his thumb in reply.
Seconds later, Bourgeois peered up toward the glass dividing him from the media and other witnesses in adjoining rooms, and then appeared to grimace and furrow his eyebrow. He began to exhale rhythmically for a minute and then his stomach starting to quiver uncontrollably. After about five minutes, the heaving of his stomach stopped and his entire body became still. He did not move for about 20 minutes before he was pronounced dead.
Bourgeois had met with his spiritual adviser earlier 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 said Bourgeois had been “praying for redemption.”
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.