BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Disputes about Louisiana's execution method weren't settled by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling Monday that a controversial drug can continue to be used in lethal injections.
The high court upheld the use of the sedative midazolam in executions, saying that won't violate a federal prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Midazolam has been implicated in several flawed executions.
But James Hilburn, a lawyer representing the state penitentiary and Corrections Department, said that won't end an ongoing federal lawsuit by five death row inmates challenging Louisiana's new execution protocol, which has never been used. A second drug in the execution method, the painkiller hydromorphone, is also being challenged.
"That part of the litigation would still be ongoing," Hilburn said.
Louisiana doesn't have any of the lethal injection drugs on hand right now, Hilburn said.
The state also doesn't have any executions scheduled while the litigation is pending. The next hearing in the lawsuit has been delayed until July 2016, when a trial date will be set.
The state's next lethal injection was planned for Christopher Sepulvado, convicted of murdering his 6-year-old stepson in 1992. But it has been on hold since February 2014 because of the federal lawsuit, along with the executions of the four other plaintiffs.
Earlier this month, the state's lawyers asked for the case's postponement — which continued to stall executions for the five men — until next year by saying "the facts and issues that are involved in this proceeding continue to be in a fluid state." Hilburn wouldn't provide further explanation Monday.
Drugs used in executions have become more difficult to acquire.
Louisiana's last execution in 2010 used three chemicals, but sodium thiopental, a key anesthetic in the process, became impossible for the Corrections Department to obtain. Prison officials then planned to use pentobarbital, a powerful sedative, as the single lethal injection drug, but the Corrections Department had trouble buying it.
In January 2014, the state announced the new execution protocol that would use the two-drug combination of midazolam and hydromorphone.