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. ![]() 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. Alfred Bourgeois abused, tortured, and beat to death his young daughter. ![]() Barr today directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of three federal-death row inmates sentenced to death for staggeringly brutal murders, including the murder of a child and, with respect to two inmates, the murder of multiple victims. "This swift action is the only adequate response to the degrading and unconstitutional execution spree and to ensure that the federal government is never able to do this again," it said.Attorney General William P. In a statement Saturday the American Civil Liberties Union called on Biden to commute the sentences of all those on federal death row and remove the death penalty from all pending trials. President-elect Biden, who will be sworn in on Wednesday, has vowed to work with Congress to try to abolish the death penalty at the federal level.ĭemocratic lawmakers on Monday introduced a bill to that effect and since their party has regained control of the Senate, it stands a chance of being adopted. Because the Court continues this pattern today, I dissent." "When it did not, this Court should have. "After waiting almost two decades to resume federal executions, the Government should have proceeded with some measure of restraint to ensure it did so lawfully." "This is not justice," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a dissenting note to Friday's decision by the Supreme Court. The Trump administration resumed federal executions in July following a 17-year hiatus, carrying them out at an unprecedented rate.Īmong the 12 people put to death since then was, for the first time in nearly 70 years, a woman - Lisa Montgomery, executed Tuesday despite doubts about her mental health.Īt the same time, states postponed all executions to avoid spreading the virus. The final bid to halt the execution then went before the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority - firmly established by Trump appointees - has systematically given the green light to federal executions since the summer. ![]() The Department of Justice immediately appealed and won the case. On the contrary, his administration fought in court to be able to proceed with the execution before he leaves the White House next week.Ī court had ordered a stay of execution on the grounds that Higgs contracted Covid-19 and that, with his damaged lungs, he would likely suffer cruelly at the time of an injection of pentobarbital. "It is arbitrary and inequitable to punish Mr Higgs more severely than the actual killer," said Higgs' lawyer Shawn Nolan, in a plea for clemency addressed to President Trump at the end of January.īut the Republican president, a staunch defender of the death penalty, did not follow up. The man who pulled the trigger was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole. In 2000, he was sentenced to death for kidnapping and murder. When one of the young women rebuffed his advances, he offered to drive them home but instead stopped in an isolated federal nature reserve outside the city.Īccording to the Department of Justice, he then ordered one of his friends to shoot the three women. In January 1996, Higgs invited three young women to his apartment near the capital Washington, along with two of his friends.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |