John Brogdon was executed by the State of Louisiana for the sexual assault and murder of an eleven year old girl
According to court documents John Brogdon and Bruce Perritt would kidnap, sexually assault and murder eleven year old Barbara Jo Brown
John Brogdon and Bruce Perritt would be arrested and convicted
Bruce Perritt would be sentenced to life without parole
John Brogdon would be sentenced to death and would be executed by way of the electric chair on July 30 1987
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When was John Brogdon executed
John Brogdon was executed on July 30 1987
How was John Brogdon executed
John Brogdon was executed by way of the electric chair
John Brogdon Case
A mentally retarded man who said he was the victim of child abuse went to his death calmly in Louisiana’s electric chair early today for the 1981 rape, torture and murder of an 11-year-old girl.
Asked if he wanted to make a statement, he said only, ″God bless ya’ll.″ Hours earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court, Brogdon’s last hope for evading Louisiana’s electric chair a third time, refused on a vote of 6-2 to stay the execution.
The Louisiana Supreme Court, U.S. District Court, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also refused this week to block the execution. The state Pardon Board also rejected arguments that Brogdon should be spared because he is mildly retarded and was abused as a child by his father.
Brogdon was condemned to die for the Oct. 7, 1981, slaying of Barbara Jo Brown, who was beaten with bricks, stabbed with broken bottles and jabbed with pointed sticks while she was raped.
His father, Ed Brogdon, admitted at the Pardon Board hearing to drinking and smoking marijuana with his teen-age son, and said he beat him so severely that he once broke some of the boy’s ribs.
John Brogdon, described as an alcoholic since he was 14, said during the hearing he didn’t think he deserved clemency, but, ″I would like to live.″
Shortly after his arrest, Brogdon told officers how he and Bruce Perritt, 17, stabbed the girl and struck her on the head with a brick after repeatedly raping her near her home in Luling.
According to trial testimony, the two teen-agers picked up the girl after she slipped away from home and went back to a convenience store where they had talked to her earlier. They drove around for more than an hour, and then went to drink beer on a Mississippi River levee where the girl was murdered.
Perritt was convicted of first-degree murder but was automatically sentenced to life in prison when the jury could not agree on whether to recommend the death penalty.
Brogdon’s lawyers had argued the execution should be postponed until the Supreme Court ruled in the fall whether juveniles convicted of murder can be executed. They said the two issues are related because they involve people too immature to fully understand the consequences of their actions.
They also argued that the execution should be postponed until the Supreme Court rules in the Leslie Lowenfield case, in which Louisiana’s death penalty law has been challenged.
Lowenfield, scheduled to die earlier this year, won a postponement, but a similar argument failed to stop the execution last Friday of Willie Watson, convicted of the rape-murder of a Tulane University medical student.
Assistant District Attorney Greg Champagne of St. Charles Parish argued that although Brodgon might be somewhat mentally retarded, he knew right from wrong at the time of the murder and was mentally competent to stand trial.
Brogdon had execution dates set aside in 1982 and 1983.