The oldest inmate on Louisiana's death row, a terminally ill man convicted of killing his young stepson in the early '90s, has died, just weeks before he was set to be executed. The state's Department of Public Safety and Corrections announced that 81-year-old Christopher Sepulvado died Saturday at Angola's Louisiana State Penitentiary, "from natural causes as a result of complications arising from his preexisting medical conditions," per the AP. Sepulvado had spent 30 years on death row, after being convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1993. He'd been charged with killing his 6-year-old stepson, Wesley Allen Mercer, after the boy came home with soiled underwear.
Prosecutors at the time accused Sepulvado of dunking him in scalding water and bashing him on the head with a screwdriver. Medical exams showed the boy had second-degree burns on nearly 60% of his body, "while his scalp separated from his skull due to hemorrhaging and bleeding," per NOLA. The boy's mother, Yvonne Mercer Sepulvado, was also convicted of murder in the case.
Shawn Nolan, the public defender who represented Christopher Sepulvado, said that his client had been transported to a local hospital for a leg amputation last week, per the Louisiana Illuminator. Another lawyer who represents death row inmates said it appeared Sepulvado's leg infection was what ultimately took his life; Nolan says that doctors had previously recommended hospice care for him, after determining that he suffered from multiple ailments and was terminally ill. "Christopher Sepulvado's death overnight in the prison infirmary is a sad comment on the state of the death penalty in Louisiana," Nolan said in a statement.
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He continued: "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's execution had been set for March 17. Louisiana only recently started up its executions again after a 15-year hiatus. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement that "justice should have been delivered long ago" in the case. "The State failed to deliver it in his lifetime, but Christopher Sepulvado now faces ultimate judgment before God in the hereafter," she noted, per NOLA. (More death row stories.)
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