Louisian Government Tricked Hospital into Supplying Execution Drug

Louisiana Government Tricked Hospital into Supplying Execution Drug

Louisiana wanted to execute Christopher Sepulvado, who was convicted in 1993 of killing his stepson. But their supply of pentobarbital, which it had used to kill prisoners in the past, had expired. Most drug manufacturers and pharmacies refuse to sell drugs to states to use to kill prisoners, so Louisiana requested another drug, hydromorphone, from a hospital, without saying what the drug would be used for.

“We assumed the drug was for one of their patients, so we sent it. We did not realize what the focus was,” Ulysses Gene Thibodeaux, a board member of Lake Charles Memorial Hospital, a private, nonprofit institution and chief judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeal, told The Lens.  “Had we known of the real use,” he said, “we never would have done it.” The hospital sold the drug to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center

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