BATON ROUGE — Todd Wessinger, who was convicted for the 1995 killings of two people at Calendar's Restaurant on Perkins Road, filed a lawsuit to prevent the state from killing him with nitrogen gas, arguing it’s unconstitutionally cruel.

This comes after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said Wessinger's attempt to overturn his death sentence does not stand.

Wessinger’s lawsuit, filed last Friday in federal Middle District of Louisiana, cites a ruling in June from the Eleventh Circuit saying that "Alabama’s substantially similar nitrogen-hypoxia protocol presented 'a substantial risk of serious harm'," court documents said.

The suit says execution by nitrogen hypoxia creates "a substantial risk of serious harm and severe pain to Mr. Wessinger."

"Nitrogen hypoxia kills by depriving a conscious person of oxygen. As oxygen deprivation intensifies, the condemned prisoner experiences severe air hunger—the primal, physical, and intensely distressing sensation of suffocation—before losing consciousness," Wessinger's attorneys argued.

Wessinger’s attorneys also argue that Louisiana has a viable alternative, pentobarbital, that is commonly used in veterinary euthanasia.