The Trump administration continued its lame-duck executions by putting convicted murderer Alfred Bourgeois to death on Friday evening.
Bourgeois, 56, was pronounced dead at 8:21 p.m. ET after he received a lethal injection at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. He had been convicted in 2004 of abusing, torturing, and beating to death his 2-year-old daughter in 2002 by punching her in the face, whipping her with a cord, burning her foot with a lighter, and smashing the back of her head against his truck until she died.
His final words were not remorseful; rather, he asked “God to forgive all those who plotted and schemed against me, and planted false evidence,” according to CNN, and he issued another denial saying, “I did not commit this crime.”
His lawyers had argued that Bourgeois shouldn’t have been given the death penalty as his IQ puts him in the intellectually disabled category that should have rendered him ineligible for the death penalty.
Attorney General William Barr ordered executions to resume in 2019. The executions have continued through the lame-duck period of President Trump’s term in office.
A day earlier, the government executed Brandon Bernard, a Texas street gang member, for his role in the slayings of a couple from Iowa more than two decades ago. Defense attorneys had argued in court and in a petition for clemency from Trump that Bernard was a low-ranking, subservient member of the group, and they say both victims were likely dead before Bernard doused their car with lighter fluid and set it on fire, a claim that conflicts with government testimony at trial.
Bourgeois is the 10th person to be executed by the federal government under the Trump administration, which is the most since the presidency of Grover Cleveland in the 1890s.
