USA - Louisiana. U.S. District Judge James Brady stopped the execution of Christopher Sepulvado finding problems with the protocol

U.S. District Judge James Brady of the Middle District of Louisiana stopped the execution of Christopher Sepulvado (scheduled for next week) pending more information on the state's lethal injection protocol. Brady had allowed Sepulvado to intervene yesterday in a federal lawsuit, Hoffman v. Jindal, challenging the state's lethal injection protocol. The injunction today means that Sepulvado's execution is on hold indefinitely while the Hoffman case proceeds. Sepulvado, 69, white, has remained on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola for nearly 2 decades, convicted in DeSoto Parish for beating and fatally scalding his stepson, 6-year-old Wesley Allen Mercer, in 1992. The state has refused to reveal its execution protocol, and that federal constraints on the lone drug the state now says it uses -- pentobarbital -- cast doubts on how and when the state obtained it. According to a court filing by the state, 6 other states now use the single-drug protocol for executions. "Sepulvado has been trying to determine what the protocol is for years and the State will not provide this information," the judge wrote. "The intransigence of the State Defendants in failing to produce the protocol requires the Court to issue this order."