Bethany Bourgeois-George unlocked the door to the aluminum mailbox of her downtown Vancouver condo on the morning of August 16, 2021, only to find the letter she had been dreading: a request from the U.S. Postal Service to pick up a package. Although the notice did not state what the package was or whom it was from, Bourgeois-George already knew — she had been expecting it for over eight months.

When Bourgeois-George later picked up the box, she was shocked by how heavy it was. Then, she looked down at her hands. They were covered with a gray, dusty substance. The ashes of her father, Alfred Bourgeois, were seeping out.

“The ashes were so heavy and I didn’t expect that. It was like a punch to the gut because it just reminded me of him as a person, like a heavy human being. And then there he was, just minimized to ashes,” Bourgeois-George said.

As she looked inside the box, she realized it was the closest she had been to her father in almost 19 years, since the day of her high school graduation dinner in LaPlace, Louisiana. They had shared a deep embrace when they said their goodbyes. Bourgeois-George didn’t think much of it, but then a month passed without hearing from him.

She would eventually learn that he had been arrested in Corpus Christi, Texas, for the sexual abuse and murder of his 2-year-old daughter, Ja’karenn Gunter, Bourgeois-George’s half sister. He was convicted on federal charges in 2002 and maintained his innocence until his death. The Trump administration executed the 56-year-old Bourgeois in December 2020, despite evidence of an intellectual disability that would make his execution unconstitutional. He was the 10th out of 13 people executed in an unprecedented federal killing spree.

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Bourgeois-George is convinced of her father’s innocence. For the past four years, she has waged a sometimes-lonely battle to clear his name, pointing to myriad filings by his death penalty attorneys that cast doubt on his conviction. The filings include sworn statements from medical experts stating that Ja’karenn’s death could be explained by an internal head injury due to ingestion of salt water during a recent trip to a California beach, rather than abuse.

Her advocacy ranges from media interviews and public appearances to efforts to secure a retrial of the case. Most recently, she submitted a posthumous pardon request to President Joe Biden, whose decision late last month to commute the sentences of almost all of the men on federal death row renewed Bourgeois-George’s hope in getting justice for her father. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“The wrongful conviction and execution of Alfred Bourgeois represent a moral failure........

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