The U.S. Has Executed It’s 10th Federal Inmate In Two Days

The United States has executed it’s 10th federal inmate of 2020, with two of them being within two days of one another.

The federal government sentenced Alfred Bourgeois to die back in 2004 for heinously sexually assaulting and murdering his 2-year-old daughter in Texas. Despite maintaining his innocence, the 56-year-old was executed Friday night at the Federal Correctional Center in Terre Haute, Indiana. The man was declared dead at 8:21 p.m. E.T. according to the Bureau of Prisons.

Bourgeois’ last words before his death were, “I ask God to forgive all those who plotted and schemed against me and planted false evidence. I did not commit this crime.”

His execution followed the execution of Brandon Bernard, who was also on federal death row. His case attracted millions of supporters, including Kim Kardashian, who asked that he not be executed. Instead, he served out his prison sentence for his role in the 1999 murders of youth pastors Todd and Stacie Bagley. Bernard maintained that he did not pull the trigger but was forced to destroy evidence by burning the victims’ vehicle. He was pronounced dead on Thursday at 9:27 p.m.

Lawyers representing Bourgeois said that his intellectual incapabilities should have spared him from being put to death. Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan also agreed that his execution should have stayed. A hearing should have been scheduled to prove that he was intellectually disabled.

“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,” Bourgeois’ attorney Victor Abreau, explained in a news release after the man’s death date was rescheduled in November for December 11th.

Bourgeois death marked the 10th execution since Attorney General William Barr revived capital punishment for federal death row inmates in July of last year. They had been halted for 17 years.

There are currently three additional federal executions scheduled before Joe Biden takes office on January 20th. Lisa Montgomery will face the death penalty on January 12th for the strangulation murder of an expectant mother in 2004 in Missouri. Cory Johnson is scheduled for January 14th after being convicted of killing seven people in Richmond, VA, related to a drug deal. Dustin John Higgs execution on January 15th will be the last under Trump’s administration if carried out. He was sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of three women in the Washington DC area.

The other seven federal inmates to be executed this year were Daniel Lewis Lee, Wesley Ira Purkey, Dustin Lee Honken, Lezmond Mitchell, Keith Dwayne Nelson, William Emmett LeCroy, Christopher Andre Vialva, and Orlando Hall.