Convicted child murderer Christopher Sepulvado, 81, died in custody on Saturday, February 22 after spending 30 years on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, according to attorney Shawn Nolan.
Sepulvado was the first inmate scheduled for execution in the past 15 years but died less than a month ahead of the scheduled date.
He was sentenced to death for the 1992 murder of his six-year-old stepson, Wesley Allen Mercer, who he had beaten with a screwdriver and scalded to death. According to court records, the child was put into a bathtub with water so hot that his skin was separating from his body.
The child’s mother was convicted of manslaughter of the child and served more than seven years in prison.
“Justice should have been delivered long ago for the heinous act of brutally beating then scalding to death a defenseless six-year-old boy,” said Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill in a statement issued the day after Sepulvado’s death. “The state failed to deliver it in his lifetime, but Christopher Sepulvado now faces ultimate judgement before God in the hereafter.”
New protocols allowing for the use of nitrogen gas to put convicted killers to death were pushed through with the help of Murrill and Governor Jeff Landry. Sepulvado was to be the first state inmate put to death since convicted rapist and murderer Gerald Bordelon in
2010.
However, Sepulvado’s lawyer offered a different take on his impending execution. He contends the execution served little purpose, as the deceased was in physical and cognitive decline. Sepulvado had been wheelchair-bound for some time and was taken to a hospital in New Orleans the previous week for the amputation of his left leg, which developed gangrene from sepsis.
“Such pointless cruelty in scheduling his execution in the face of all this overlooked the hard work Chris did over the decades in prison to confront the harm he caused, to become a better person, and to devote himself to serving God and helping others,” Nolan wrote. “It was my honor to fight for Chris, a man who redeemed himself. May he rest in peace.”
Attorney and former Catholic nun Alison Mc-Cray echoed a similar sentiment.
“As a person of faith, it was unfathomable to me why Louisiana was pursuing Chris’s execution,” she said. “He spent decades, mostly in solitary confinement, in prison for his crime, and has used that time to take responsibility for his action, become a better person, and help others. Given his debilitated condition, it was clear he would die soon of natural causes.”
Sepulvado’s son, Jeremy Bryan, formerly Jeremy Lynn Mercer, told a different story to KTBS in Shreveport. He was three weeks old when his six-year-old half-brother, Wesley Allen Mercer. Bryan was placed into foster care following the murder. From the beginning his foster family told him about the tragic events that had happened.
“Thirty-three years on death row is insane,” Bryan told KTBS. “There are people that were waiting for justice that are dead and gone now. Wesley’s grandparents are dead and gone, and they loved that kid.”