81-year-old death row inmate dies weeks before his scheduled execution

(CNN) — An 81-year-old Louisiana death row inmate died Saturday, several weeks before he was scheduled to be put to death for his young stepson’s murder in what would have been one of the state’s first two executions in 15 years as it shifts posture on capital punishment.

The inmate, Christopher Sepulvado, had long been unwell, attorneys said: He was confined to a wheelchair and suffered from a variety of chronic conditions and illnesses, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, an occluded – or blocked – artery to his brain and gangrene that led to sepsis in his leg.

Days before his execution warrant was signed, doctors had recommended Sepulvado enter hospice care, his attorneys said. He was hospitalized last week in New Orleans, they said, and returned Friday to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.

“Christopher Sepulvado’s death overnight in the prison infirmary is a sad comment on the state of the death penalty in Louisiana,” his attorney Shawn Nolan said Sunday in a statement, describing the prospect of the state executing “this tiny, frail, dying old man” as “simply barbaric.”

The state Department of Public Safety and Corrections confirmed Sepulvado’s death in a statement, noting, “He died from natural causes as a result of complications arising from his pre-existing medical conditions.”

Sepulvado’s death comes as Louisiana moves to resume executions after more than a decade. To that end, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry two weeks ago announced the state had finalized a new execution protocol that includes nitrogen hypoxia, a new execution method it adopted last year.

The method – which in Louisiana involves forcing an inmate to breathe “pure” nitrogen gas through a mask, depriving him of the oxygen needed to live – has so far been used only in Alabama; it also is legal in Oklahoma and Mississippi. Lethal injection is the primary method of execution in the 27 US states with the death penalty.

Louisiana officials have not said whether they intend to use nitrogen gas or lethal injection when they restart executions next month. Within days of the governor’s announcement of the new protocol, warrants were signed scheduling the executions of Sepulvado and another inmate, Jessie Hoffman, for March 17 and 18, respectively.

Landry cast the protocol as a step toward securing justice for the death row inmates’ victims, saying the state had “failed to uphold the promises made” to them. No executions have been carried out in Louisiana since 2010 due to the state’s struggles to get the drugs necessary for lethal injection and scant political will (Landry’s predecessor, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, was opposed to the death penalty).

“The time for broken promises has ended; we will carry out these sentences and justice will be dispensed,” Landry said in his statement.

Republican Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill echoed that sentiment in commenting on Sepulvado’s death: “Justice should have been delivered long ago for the heinous act of brutally beating then scalding to death a defenseless six year old boy.”

“The State failed to deliver it in his lifetime,” Murrill said Sunday in a post on X, “but Christopher Sepulvado now faces ultimate judgment before God in the hereafter.”

Inmate was remorseful for 6-year-old’s killing, attorneys said

Sepulvado was sentenced to death in 1993 for the killing of 6-year-old Wesley “Allen” Mercer, his stepson.

The boy had come home in March 1992 having had a bathroom accident at school, according to the inmate’s 2023 clemency petition. Sepulvado and his wife refused to let the child change his clothes – or eat – for two more days. Sepulvado finally told the boy to take a bath, but when he hesitated, Sepulvado struck Allen with a screwdriver handle until he was unconscious.

Allen was then put in a bathtub of scalding water, the petition says. By the time Sepulvado and his wife took the boy to the hospital, he had already died as a result of burns, the petition says.

Sepulvado’s attorneys had argued executing him served no purpose. Aside from the fact he was already dying, they pointed to his efforts to redeem himself on death row.

They described Sepulvado as a remorseful model inmate known for helping others and committed to his Christian faith, which was the catalyst for his rehabilitation, the 2023 petition says. He often led other inmates in prayer and served as a praise and worship leader, and he studied the Bible in correspondence courses, it says.

To his attorneys, this was evidence Sepulvado deserved mercy, particularly when considered alongside his myriad health issues.

“Such pointless cruelty in scheduling his execution in the face of all this overlooked the hard work Chris did over his decades in prison to confront the harm he had caused,” Nolan said Sunday, “to become a better person, and to devote himself to serving God and helping others.”

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