A federal appellate court refused this week to overturn a ban on housing incarcerated youth in Angola. (Photo by Jarvis DeBerry/Louisiana Illuminator)
Christopher Sepulvado, 81, died overnight at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, according to his attorney. He was scheduled to be executed next month for the murder of his stepson in 1992.
Shawn Nolan, who represented Sepulvado, said he was admitted to a New Orleans hospital last week for a leg amputation. Doctors instead returned him to Angola, and it is believed that the infection ultimately killed Sepulvado, according to Cecelia Kappel, another attorney who represents death row inmates.
According to Nolan, doctors had previously determined that Sepulvado, who suffered from multiple serious ailments, was terminally ill and recommended hospice care when a judge set his execution date for March 17.
“Christopher Sepulvado’s death overnight in the prison infirmary is a sad comment on the state of the death penalty in Louisiana,” Nolan wrote in an email. “The idea that the State was planning to strap this tiny, frail, dying old man to a chair and force him to breathe toxic gas into his failing lungs is simply barbaric.”
Sepulvado would be the first person in Louisiana to be executed via nitrogen hypoxia, a method approved by state lawmakers and Gov. Jeff Landry last year.
The death penalty has not been used in Louisiana since 2010, when Gerald Bordelon, 47, was given a lethal injection for kidnapping and murdering his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Courtney LeBlanc, in Livingston Parish.
Jessie Hoffman, 46, who was sentenced to death for the 1996 rape and murder of 28-year-old Mary “Molly” Elliot, is the next person scheduled for execution in Louisiana. According to authorities, Hoffman abducted Elliot in downtown New Orleans and brought her to St. Tammany Parish, where he raped and murdered her before leaving her body in a remote area near the Pearl River.
Hoffman is scheduled to die on March 18, but attorneys representing ten death row inmates are challenging Louisiana’s new execution method in court. 57 people are currently facing the death penalty in the state.
On February 12, DeSoto Parish Judge Amy Burford McCartney issued a death warrant for Sepulvado in connection with the murder of 6-year-old Wesley Allen Mercer. Police reported that the boy was beaten and scalded to death. His mother, Yvonne Jones, was convicted of manslaughter and served over seven years in prison.
Sepulvado was originally scheduled to die by lethal injection in 2013, but his attorney successfully argued that Louisiana officials did not provide enough information about the drugs used to execute him. A federal judge ruled that the lack of such details constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
Multiple execution dates for Sepulvado have since been set and then suspended as lawyers for him and other death row inmates challenge the use of lethal injection.
Sepulvado’s motion for reconsideration was denied in November 2022, but U.S. District Judge Shelley Dick, appointed by former President Barack Obama, agreed Friday to reopen the case.
Landry expressed his displeasure with Dick’s decision on social media Friday.
“Judge Dick’s ruling is not shocking!” Landry posted on X. “After I was elected, she immediately advertised for a death penalty law clerk so that she could support the criminals.” Then she waited until the eve of execution to rule on the defective motion. Judge Dick clearly favors the horrible killers over the victims’ families and will go to any length to keep their claims alive.”
Attorney General Liz Murrill will argue on behalf of the state to carry out any executions that are scheduled. She responded to Sepulvado’s death on social media on Sunday.
“Justice should have been delivered long ago for the heinous act of brutally beating then scalding to death a defenseless six year old boy,” Murrill posted to X. “The State failed to deliver it in his lifetime but Christopher Sepulvado now faces ultimate judgment before God in the hereafter.”
