For the first time since 2010, Louisiana is preparing to carry out an execution. A DeSoto Parish judge has signed a death warrant for Christopher Sepulvado, 81, scheduling his execution for Monday, March 17, 2025. Sepulvado was sentenced to death for the brutal 1992 beating and scalding death of his six-year-old stepson, Wesley Allen Mercer, in Mansfield, Louisiana.
The decision to resume executions follows Governor Jeff Landry’s announcement that Louisiana will proceed with capital punishment after the state legislature approved nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution.
The process involves administering nitrogen gas through a mask, causing suffocation. Until now, Alabama was the only state with an established protocol for this method, though Mississippi and Oklahoma have also approved its use.
Sepulvado’s execution was originally scheduled for February 2013, but a federal judge issued a 90-day stay after his attorneys argued that there was insufficient information about the drugs planned for use in lethal injections. Since then, repeated legal challenges have delayed the execution.
With the Louisiana Supreme Court affirming Sepulvado’s death sentence and the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the lower court rulings, his execution is now set to proceed.
A second execution is scheduled for the following day. Jessie Hoffman, 46, is set to be executed on March 18 for the 1996 murder of 28-year-old Mary “Molly” Elliot.
Hoffman, who was 18 at the time, kidnapped Elliot at gunpoint from a parking garage in New Orleans, forced her to withdraw money from an ATM, and took her to a rural area where he attempted to sexually assault her before shooting her during a struggle. Her body was discovered on Thanksgiving Day by a duck hunter near the Middle Pearl River.
A jury found Hoffman guilty of first-degree murder and unanimously recommended the death sentence, citing the “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel manner” of the crime.
Since 1976, Louisiana has carried out 28 executions—20 by electrocution and 8 by lethal injection. The state currently has 63 inmates on death row.
