• Corrections department did not reveal drug’s intended use • ‘Had we known we never would have done it’ • Arizona inmate was injected 15 times

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.



“Had we known of the real use we never would have done it.”

Medical experts said the request would not seem that unusual to the hospital, because hydromorphone is used to minimise patient suffering and hospital pharmacies frequently provide drugs to other pharmacies, including those in the prison system.

Louisiana was unable to obtain pentobarbital, a drug used in its usual cocktail for lethal injections. It then approved another method for executions using a combination of hydromorphone and midazolam.



States have found it increasingly difficult to acquire lethal injection drugs since manufacturers, mostly based in Europe, began to withdraw supplies because of their opposition to capital punishment.

The mixture of hydromorphone and midazolam was first used in January in Ohio’s execution of Dennis McGuire, which lasted nearly 30 minutes. Eyewitnesses said McGuire gasped for breath for at least 10 minutes while making attempts to sit up on the gurney.

It was also used in April in Oklahoma’s botched execution of Clayton Lockett, which lasted about 43 minutes. The White House said that execution “fell short of humane standards”.

Last month the mixture was used in Arizona, in the execution of Joseph Wood, who according to a court filing was seen to be “gasping and snorting” after he was injected. It subsequently emerged that Wood had been injected 15 times during the nearly two hours it took him to die.

The attorney general, Eric Holder, subsequently said he was “greatly troubled” by the spate of botched executions.

Information about how the Louisiana department of corrections obtained hydromorphone is sealed but, along with Thibodeaux’s claims, the Lens saw a document confirming the source of the drug.