Execution can go forward, Louisiana Supreme Court decides
The Louisiana Supreme Court has denied condemned inmate Christopher Sepulvado's bid to stay his scheduled Feb. 13 execution. The decision leaves Sepulvado, 69, with dwindling chances to avoid lethal execution, although he continues to press for a federal reprieve and clemency from Gov. Bobby Jindal.
Sepulvado, a Shreveport-area man, would be the first person executed in Louisiana since 2010 and the first non-voluntary execution in the state in more than a decade.
His lawyers have argued that he should be allowed to challenge the drug combination that the state would use to kill him. They claim a worldwide shortage of sodium pentathol, the first drug in the traditional three-drug mix for lethal injection, has thrown the execution procedure in Louisiana into a constitutional haze.
Just what the current state protocol is for lethal injection is unclear. Pam Laborde, spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections, has said she can't comment on the procedure, citing pending federal litigation.
Sepulvado has remained on death row at the Lousiana State Penitentiary in Angola for nearly two decades, convicted in DeSoto Parish for beating and fatally scalding his stepson, 6-year-old Wesley Allen Mercer, at home in Mansfield in 1992. According to court records, the boy's scalp had separated from his skull from the hemorrhaging and bruising.
Sepulvado admitted stabbing the boy with a screwdriver but claimed the scalding was a bathtub accident.
In most states, the traditional lethal injection procedure has included sodium pentathol, which is intended to render the subject unconscious; pancurium bromide, which is meant to cause paralysis; and potassium chloride, a drug akin to road salt that causes cardiac arrest.
Condemned inmates in numerous states have challenged the combo on various grounds -- among them, that in certain cases the condemned were left conscious, paralyzed and in excruciating pain.
Sepulvado's attorneys have repeatedly claimed that his due process rights are being violated, either because the state has no execution protocol or because it won't reveal it.
The state denied Sepulvado's request for information on the procedure, citing security concerns, according to his legal filing. Sepulvado's attorneys continue to press for information on the protocol under state public records law.
District Court Judge Robert Burgess on Dec. 21 denied a stay of execution for Sepulvado. In its ruling, the state Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of Burgess' decision.
An appeals court panel in Baton Rouge has rejected a different death row inmate's claim that the state needed to adopt lethal injection guidelines under the Louisiana Administrative Procedure Act.
Louisiana switched from electrocution to lethal injection in 1990. There are now a little more than 80 inmates on death row at Angola.
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/...ard_state.html
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