Louisiana Executions on Hold Until At Least 2018

Louisiana will not conduct any executions in 2016 or 2017 as a result of a new court order issued with the consent of the parties in federal proceedings challenging the constitutionality of Louisiana’s lethal injection process. At the request of the Louisiana Attorney General, a federal judge has delayed proceedings on the state’s lethal injection protocol for an additional 18 months, making January 2018 the earliest date the state could resume executions. Attorney General Jeff Landry asked for the extension because the facts of the case are in a “fluid state” and it would be “a waste of resources and time to litigate this matter at present time.” The request marked the third time in two years that the state has asked to delay the trial. In June 2015, after the state’s execution drugs had expired, its lawyers told the court that Louisiana lacked the drugs necessary to carry out executions. In February, the Louisiana Department of Corrections indicated that the state still did not have the drugs needed to conduct an execution. Previously, in 2013, the state had considered purchasing execution drugs from a Tulsa, Oklahoma, compounding pharmacy that was not licensed to provide drugs to any pharmacy in Louisiana, making any purchase of drugs from that company by the Louisiana State Penitentiary Pharmacy illegal under state law. That compounding pharmacy, which secretly sold execution drugs to Missouri during the same period, was implicated in nearly 2,000 violations of Oklahoma pharmacy regulations. The state later obtained one of the execution drugs it needed from a hospital in Lake Charles, misrepresenting to the hospital that it needed the drugs for medical purposes. Christopher Sepulvado, one of the two inmates named in the challenge to the constitutionality of Louisiana’s execution procedure, was originally scheduled to be executed in 2014. Louisiana’s protocol allows for either a one-drug execution using pentobarbital, or a two-drug execution using midazolam and hydromorphone. The state does not have the drugs necessary for either option, according to a spokesperson for the Depatment of Corrections. Louisiana’s last execution was in 2010.

(M. Kunzelman, “State asks to rule out next Louisiana execution before 2018,” Associated Press, May 31, 2016; D. Hasselle, “Executions in Louisiana on hold until at least January 2018,” The Lens, June 1, 2016; D. Hasselle, “State has explored illegally obtaining drug for upcoming execution,” The Lens, Jan. 25, 2014.) See Lethal Injection.