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A DeSoto Parish judge has set an execution date for a convicted killer on Louisiana’s death row, continuing a flurry of legal activity since Gov. Jeff Landry established protocols Monday to use nitrogen gas to put condemned people to death.
Judge Amy Burford McCartney set a March 17 execution date Tuesday for Christopher Sepulvado, 81, who was sentenced to die for the 1992 murder of his 6-year-old stepson, Wesley Allen Mercer. Police said the boy was beaten and scalded to death. His mother, Yvonne Jones, was convicted of manslaughter and served more than seven years in prison.
The death warrant for Sepulvado came a day after a Rapides Parish judge issued a March 29 execution date for Larry Roy. He has been on death row since 1994 for the murder of his girlfriend’s ex-husband, Freddie Richard Jr., and her aunt, Rosetta Solas.
Roy’s warrant was withdrawn Tuesday after his attorneys argued he had yet to exhaust all of his appeals. Rapides District Attorney Phillip Terrell said he intends to seek another execution date for Roy.
Colin Sims, district attorney for St. Tammany and Washington parishes, has asked a judge to set an execution date for Jesse Hoffman, The Times-Picayune reported. Hoffman was convicted in the 1996 rape and murder of 28-year-old Mary “Molly” Elliot.
A total of 57 people have been condemned to die in Louisiana, where the most recent death sentence carried out was in 2010. Gerald Bordelon waived his appeals and agreed to undergo lethal injection for the 2002 rape and murder of his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Courtney LeBlanc.
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Sepulvado was previously scheduled to die in 2013, but his attorney successfully argued that Louisiana officials could not provide enough information on the drugs being used to execute him. The lack of those details constituted cruel and unusual punishment, a federal judge ruled.
Multiple execution dates for Sepulvado have since been handed down and subsequently suspended as lawyers for him and other death row inmates have challenged the use of lethal injection. A federal judge in Baton Rouge denied Sepulvado’s most recent motion for reconsideration in November 2022.
Now Sepulvado’s attorney says the octogenarian’s failing health makes carrying out the death sentence a pointless exercise. In a statement, Shawn Nolan said his client has “stage 4 chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease with extensive coronary calcification, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, asthma, prediabetes, degeneration of his spine and shoulders, and cellulitis.”
Sepulvado was recently hospitalized after a fall at Louisiana State Penitentiary, which Nolan said has happened repeatedly, and the prison’s medical staff has started the process to provide him with palliative care.
“Chris Sepulvado is a debilitated old man suffering from serious medical ailments,” Nolan said. “He is confined to a wheelchair, he falls frequently, and his heart and lungs are struggling to keep working. He spends his time serving his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and trying to help others. There is no conceivable reason why ‘justice’ might be served by executing Chris instead of letting him live out his few remaining days in prison.”
Nolan argues against the use of lethal injection and nitrogen hypoxia for Sepulvado. During his recent hospital stay, doctors had trouble finding a vein to draw blood, the attorney said. The “unstudied method of nitrogen hypoxia” could be complicated by Sepulvado’s heart and respiratory issues, he added.
Landry and the Louisiana Legislature approved adding nitrogen hypoxia to the state’s execution methods last year, following years of difficulties in obtaining drugs needed for lethal injection.
Alabama is the only state to carry out nitrogen hypoxia executions, with four condemned men put to death using the method.
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