The Trump administration continued its unprecedented series of post-election federal executions Friday by putting to death a Louisiana truck driver who abused and killed his two-year-old daughter.
Alfred Bourgeois, 56, was pronounced dead at 8.21pm eastern time after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
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”.
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Bourgeois was the 10th federal death-row inmate put to death since federal executions resumed under 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 on Friday as he sought to come to terms with the possibility of dying, and he was also praying, 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 had not been a troublemaker on death row and had a good disciplinary record.
The last time the number of civilians executed federally reached 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, also marks 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.
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. The death of 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.
Several high-profile figures, including Kim Kardashian West, appealed to Trump to commute Bernard’s sentence to life in prison, citing, among other things, Bernard’s youth at the time and the remorse he has expressed over years.
In Bourgeois’ case, the crimes stand out as particularly brutal because they involved his young daughter.
According to court filings, he gained temporary custody of the child after a 2002 paternity suit from a Texas woman. Bourgeois was living in Louisiana with his wife and their two children.
Over the next month, Bourgeois whipped the girl with an electrical cord, burned her feet with a cigarette lighter and hit her in the head with a plastic baseball bat so hard that her head swelled – then refused to seek medical treatment for her, court documents say. Prosecutors also said he sexually abused her.
It was during a trucking run to Corpus Christi, Texas, that he ended up killing the toddler, slamming her head on the windows and dashboard four times, court filings say. She died the next day in a hospital of brain injuries.
After his 2004 conviction, a judge rejected claims stemming from his alleged intellectual disability, noting he did not receive a diagnosis until after he was sentenced to death.
Attorneys argued that finding was based on misunderstandings about such disabilities. They said Bourgeois had tests that demonstrated his IQ was around 70, well below average, and that his childhood history buttressed their claims.
Bourgeois’ lawyers did not argue that he should have been acquitted or should not have been handed a stiff penalty, just that he shouldn’t be executed, Nolan said.
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