Judge signs death warrant

• By BOB ANDERSON
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Nov 10, 2009 - Page: 1B

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LIVINGSTON — A death warrant filed Monday sets Gerald Bordelon’s execution date for Jan. 7.

A jury convicted Bordelon in 2006 of murdering his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Courtney LeBlanc.

Bordelon requested that the conviction and death sentence not be appealed. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled last month that Bordelon has the right to waive his automatic appeal.

The warrant filed Monday with the Livingston Parish clerk of court was signed by Bruce C. Bennett, the 21st Judicial District Court judge who presided over Bordelon’s first-degree murder trial.

The prosecution alleged Bordelon kidnapped his stepdaughter at knifepoint in November 2002, took her to Mississippi, where he forced her to perform oral sex on him, then took her to a wooded area along the Amite River where he strangled her.

Bordelon later confessed to killing the girl and took authorities to his stepdaughter’s partially clothed body on the East Baton Rouge side of the river.

Under Louisiana law, death penalties are carried out by lethal injection.

As of late Monday, the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections had not received a copy of the death warrant, said Angela Whittaker, assistant to the secretary.

Last month, the Louisiana Supreme Court granted Bordelon’s request not to appeal his conviction and sentence, which were unanimously agreed to by a 12-member jury.

In its decision, the Supreme Court noted that Bordelon is only the second person in the state convicted of a capital offense to waive his right to an automatic appeal and said Bordelon was the first to do so on the day he was formally sentenced to death.

Prior to its latest ruling in the case, the Supreme Court had instructed the district court to hold a hearing on Bordelon’s mental competency to waive his right to an automatic appeal.

After hearing the testimony of two physicians in July 2007, Bennett ruled Bordelon was mentally competent.

Monday’s death warrant says the conviction and sentencing of Bordelon were made final by the Supreme Court’s Oct. 16 order, which remanded the case to the district court to have an execution date set.