Aug 1, 2019
A child killer who has spent 15 years on federal death row faces execution in January after the U.S. government reinstated the death penalty last month — ending a hiatus that began a year after truck driver Alfred Bourgeois tortured and killed his 2-year-old daughter in Texas.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced July 25 that the government would resume federal executions, beginning with five convicts who have exhausted their appeals processes.
Bourgeois' case shares some traits with the other four federal prisoners set for execution in December and January: Their crimes were gruesome and involved child victims.
Bourgeois, 55, is set to be executed by lethal injection Jan. 13, 2020, at the U.S. prison in Terre Haute, Ind. A Texas jury found the long-haul trucker from Louisiana guilty in 2004 of beating his daughter to death at a Corpus Christi naval base June 28, 2002.
The day she died, the girl had tipped over her potty training chair in the cab of Bourgeois' 18-wheeler. He became enraged and slammed the toddler's head into the truck window.
During the trial, the prosecution argued that Bourgeois had continually and regularly abused the child, physically and sexually, often concealing her injuries with socks and sunglasses.
Bourgeois, maintained he was innocent throughout the trial, refusing to take a plea deal, and blamed his wife for the murder.
But while in jail, he joked to another inmate that “that [expletive] baby’s head got as big as a watermelon” after he beat the child with a plastic baseball bat, court documents show.
The jury took less than two hours to find Bourgeois guilty and later recommended the death sentence.
