Louisiana man on death row dies weeks before March execution date

ANGOLA, La. — A terminally ill man who spent over 30 years on death row in Louisiana for the killing of his stepson died days after a March date was scheduled for his execution by nitrogen gas.

Christopher Sepulvado, 81, died Saturday at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, “from natural causes as a result of complications arising from his pre-existing medical conditions,” according to the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections.

Sepulvado was charged with the 1992 killing of his 6-year-old stepson after the boy came home from school with soiled underwear. Sepulvado was accused of hitting him on the head with a screwdriver and immersing him in scalding water. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1993.

His attorney, federal public defender Shawn Nolan, said in a statement Sunday that doctors recently determined Sepulvado was terminally ill and recommended hospice care. Nolan described his client’s “significant” physical and cognitive decline in recent years.

“Christopher Sepulvado’s death overnight in the prison infirmary is a sad comment on the state of the death penalty in Louisiana,” Nolan said. “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.”

According to Nolan, Sepulvado had been sent to New Orleans for surgery earlier in the week but was returned to the prison Friday night.

Louisiana officials decided to resume carrying out death sentences earlier this month after a 15-year pause driven by a lack of political interest and the inability to secure legal injection drugs. Republican Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to proceed with a new nitrogen gas execution protocol after the state’s GOP-dominated Legislature last year expanded death row execution methods to include electrocution and nitrogen gas.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement that “justice should have been delivered long ago” and Louisiana “failed to deliver it in his lifetime.”

Sepulvado’s execution was scheduled for March 17. Another man, Jessie Hoffman, was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and slated for execution on March 18. Hoffman initially challenged Louisiana’s lethal injection protocol in 2012 on the grounds that the method constituted cruel and unusual punishment. A federal judge on Friday reopened that lawsuit after it was dismissed in 2022 because the state had no executions planned.

The country’s first execution using nitrogen gas was carried out last year in Alabama, which has now executed four people using the method.