CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS — The Federal Government is set to execute five death row prisoners beginning Thursday, December 10, 2020. Alfred Bourgeois is one of the five prisoners on the list.
Bourgeois abused, tortured and beat his young daughter.
According to the Department of Justice, After a paternity test identified Bourgeois as the father of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl and a court-ordered that he pay child support to the mother, Bourgeois took temporary custody of his daughter and brought her with him on a trucking route. While on the trip, Bourgeois systematically abused and tortured her — including by punching her in the face, whipping her with an electrical cord and burning the bottom of her foot with a cigarette lighter.
In July 2002, Bourgeois arrived at the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station for a delivery. While backing his truck up to a loading dock, his daughter tipped over her training potty. Bourgeois became enraged and repeatedly slammed the back of her head into the truck’s window and dashboard, killing her.
On March 16, 2004, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas found Bourgeois guilty of murder within the special territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and unanimously recommended a death sentence, which the court imposed. His conviction and sentence were affirmed on appeal, and his requests for collateral relief were ultimately rejected by federal courts.
In July 2019, his execution was scheduled for Jan. 13, 2020, but legal impediments prevented the government from proceeding at that time.
Bourgeois is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Dec. 11, 2020, at the Federal Correctional Complex at Terre Haute, Ind.
All five death row inmates were convicted of killing children. If all the executions are carried out, that would make for 13 federal executions since July, when the Trump Administration resumed carrying out the death penalty after a 17-year hiatus.
