A Louisiana hospital unknowingly provided the state’s department of corrections with a drug used for lethal injections, it was revealed this week.
The Louisiana department of corrections purchased 20 vials of hydromorphone from Lake Charles Memorial hospital a week before the scheduled execution of Christopher Sepulvado, but did not inform the hospital of its intended use for the drug, according to a report by non-profit news group the Lens. The same report noted that the purchase was revealed in a document provided by the state in a lawsuit challenging its lethal-injection practice.
Sepulvado’s execution had been scheduled for 5 February, but was delayed and has not been rescheduled. Sepulvado was convicted of murdering his six-year-old stepson in 1993. Prosecutors said he beat the boy with a screwdriver before putting him in scalding water.
“We assumed the drug was for one of their patients, so we sent it. We did not realise what the focus was,” Ulysses Gene Thibodeaux, a board member for the private, non-profit hospital, told the Lens. Thibodeaux is also chief judge of the third circuit court of appeal but did not preside over the case linked to the execution drugs.