Alfred Bourgeois executed: Louisiana man denies killing daughter in last words, says 'I didn't commit this crime'
The 56-year-old truck driver from Louisiana who was on death row for molesting and murdering his 2-year-old daughter was executed on Friday, December 11, at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was pronounced dead at 8.21 pm after receiving a lethal injection.
He was one of the five federal inmates whose execution was ordered by Attorney General Bill Barr in July 2019 after a 16-year lapse in federal executions. He was the tenth inmate to be executed in 2020. A report by the Federal Bureau of Prisons states that the killer "physically and emotionally tortured, and then beat to death his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter".
However, in his last words, Bourgeois denied the crime and did not apologize for the murder of his daughter. He reportedly said, "I ask God to forgive all those who plotted and schemed against me, and planted false evidence. I did not commit this crime."
Meanwhile, his lawyers argued that he was intellectually disabled and constitutionally ineligible for the death penalty. They said, "His IQ had been tested on two occasions at 70 and 75, and had been 'corrected under clinically accepted standards to 67 and 68", MEAWW reported earlier.
One of Bourgeois' attorneys, Vic Abreu, told MEAWW: "Mr Bourgeois is a person with intellectual disability, and both the Constitution and the plain language of the Federal Death Penalty Act bar his execution. The jury that sentenced Mr Bourgeois to death never learned that he was a person with intellectual disability because his trial lawyers did not present the evidence that was available to them."
"When the performance of his trial lawyers was later challenged on appeal, the court denied relief using outdated and unscientific standards and stereotypes about people with intellectual disability that have been thoroughly rejected by scientific community and the United States Supreme Court in Moore v Texas," Abreu added.
Even though the Supreme Court ruled that the execution of people with intellectual disabilities was "unusual and cruel punishment", thus deeming it “unconstitutional”, the Justice Department said in a statement, "all the inmates sentenced to death by Barr had exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies, and currently no legal impediments prevent their executions".
Abreu added in his statement to MEAWW, "In the wake of Moore, Mr Bourgeois again sought review of his case and was granted a stay of execution to prove his intellectual disability under current scientific standards as the Supreme Court required."
"In a ruling that paves the way for Mr Bourgeois to be executed without any court ever reviewing the evidence of his intellectual disability using proper scientific standards, a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that because Mr Bourgeois was previously denied relief, he could not seek further review of his claim. Now, even though the Court of Appeals has not concluded its review of that panel decision, has not issued a ruling or issued its mandate, the government has scheduled an execution date for Mr Bourgeois,” he said.
Bourgeois was executed a day after Brandon Bernard, a 40-year-old man who was on death row for the killing of two Christian youth ministers in 1999. He reportedly apologized before his execution on December 10 saying, “I’m sorry. That's the only words that I can say that completely capture how I feel now and how I felt that day."