Louisiana executes Jessie Hoffman Jr.

Louisiana used nitrogen gas Tuesday evening to execute a man convicted of murdering a woman in 1996, the 1st time the state has used the method, a lawyer for the condemned man said.

Jessie Hoffman Jr., 46, was put to death at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, defense lawyer Cecelia Kappel said in a statement. He was the 1st person executed in the state in 15 years, and his death marked the 5th use of the nitrogen gas method in the US, with all the rest in Alabama.

Hoffman was convicted of the murder of Mary "Molly" Elliott, a 28-year-old advertising executive. At the time of the crime, Hoffman was 18.

Hoffman's lawyers had contended that the nitrogen gas execution method violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. But state officials maintain that it is painless.

"It is unfortunate that bad people exist, and they do real bad things," said Gov. Jeff Landry. "When these acts of violence happen, society must not tolerate it. God is as Just as he is Merciful; and my hope is that when Louisiana empties death row, there will never be another victim whose perpetrator must be placed there. In Louisiana, we will always prioritize victims over criminals, law and order over lawlessness, and justice over the status quo. If you commit heinous acts of violence in this State, it will cost you your life. Plain and simple."

The U.S. Supreme Court late Tuesday rejected a request to block the execution from being carried out.

Hoffman's lawyers had argued that the nitrogen gas method violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. They also said it infringed on Hoffman's freedom to practice religion, specifically his Buddhist breathing and meditation in the moments leading up to death.

However, Louisiana officials maintained the method, which deprives a person of oxygen, is painless. They also said it was past time for the state to deliver justice as promised to victims' families after a decade and a half hiatus — one brought on partly by an inability to secure lethal injection drugs.

Attorney General Liz Murrill said she expects at least four people on Louisiana's death row to be executed this year and said "justice will finally be served" by executing Hoffman.

After court battles earlier this month, attorneys for Hoffman had turned to the Supreme Court in hopes of halting the execution plan. The court last year declined to intervene in the nation's first nitrogen hypoxia execution.

This week, his attorneys filed several challenges in state and federal courts seeking to spare him.

At a hearing Tuesday morning, 19th Judicial District Court Judge Richard "Chip" Moore also declined to stop the execution. He agreed with state lawyers who argued the man's religion-based arguments fell under the jurisdiction of a federal judge who had already ruled on them, according to local news outlets.

Under Louisiana protocol, which is nearly identical to Alabama's, Hoffman is to be strapped to a gurney and have a full-face respirator mask fitted tightly on him. Pure nitrogen gas is then to be pumped into the mask, forcing him to breathe it in and depriving him of the oxygen needed to maintain bodily functions.

The gas is to be administered for at least 15 minutes or 5 minutes after his heart rate reaches a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer.

Each inmate put to death using nitrogen in Alabama has appeared to shake and gasp to varying degrees during their executions, according to media witnesses, including an Associated Press reporter. The reactions are involuntary movements associated with oxygen deprivation, state officials have said.

Alabama 1st used the lethal gas to put Kenneth Eugene Smith to death last year, marking the 1st time a new method had been used in the U.S. since lethal injection was introduced in 1982.

4 states — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma — specifically authorize execution by nitrogen hypoxia, according to records compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Then on Tuesday, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation allowing executions using nitrogen gas, making hers the 5th state to adopt the method. Arkansas currently has 25 people on death row.

Seeking to resume executions, Louisiana's GOP-dominated Legislature expanded the state's approved death penalty methods last year to include nitrogen hypoxia and electrocution. Lethal injection was already in place.

Over recent decades, the number of executions nationally has declined sharply amid legal battles, a shortage of lethal injection drugs and waning public support for capital punishment. That has led a majority of states to either abolish or pause carrying out the death penalty.

On Tuesday afternoon, a small group of execution opponents held a vigil outside the rural southeast Louisiana prison at Angola, where the state's executions are carried out. Some passed out prayer cards with photos of a smiling Hoffman and planned a Buddhist reading and "Meditation for Peace."

— Hoffman becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death in Louisiana this year, the the 29th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 14, 1983.

— Hoffman becomes the 7th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA, and the 1,614th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, Rick Halperin, March 18, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Comments

Indonesia | Lindsay Sandiford convinced she will be released soon

A British drugs mule grandmother on Indonesia's death row is so convinced she will be freed from prison that she has started given her clothes away to other inmates. Lindsay Sandiford, 67, has been incarcerated in a cramped cell inside Bali's hellish Kerobokan prison since 2013 where she is facing execution by firing squad. The grandmother-of-two was sentenced to death for attempting to smuggle £1.6million worth of cocaine into Indonesia's capital by stuffing it into the lining of her suitcase. But her pals say she has now 'slumped into depression' as she thought she would have been released by now due to a change in the country's law.

Texas Death Row chef who cook for hundreds of inmates explained why he refused to serve one last meal

Brian Price would earn the title after 11 years cooking for the condemned In the unlikely scenario that you ever find yourself on Death Row, approaching your final days as a condemned man, what would you request for your final meal? Would you push the boat out and request a full steal dinner or play it safe and opt for a classic dish such as pizza or a burger? For most of us it's something that we'll never have to think about, but for one man who spent over a decade working as a 'Death Row chef' encountering prisoner's final requests wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

The doctor defending Louisiana’s controversial execution method

Dr. Joseph Antognini travels across the nation, being paid over $500 an hour by government officials who rely on him to vouch for their execution protocols. This [article] is part of “ Operating Capital ,” an ongoing Lens discussion about Louisiana’s resumption of executions. Earlier this month, Dr. Joseph Antognini, a California-based retired anesthesiologist, walked into the execution chamber at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He tried on the air-tight mask that prison staff plan to use to execute Death Row prisoner Jessie Hoffman , using nitrogen hypoxia, a method that Louisiana executioners have never before used.

South Carolina plans to carry out a firing squad execution. Is it safe for witnesses?

South Carolina plans to execute a man by firing squad on March 7, the first such execution in the state and the first in the nation in 15 years. But firearms experts are questioning whether South Carolina's indoor execution setup is safe for the workers who will shoot the prisoner and the people who will watch. Photos released by the South Carolina Department of Corrections show that the state intends to strap the prisoner, Brad Sigmon, to a metal seat in the same small, indoor brick death chamber where South Carolina has executed more than 40 other prisoners by electric chair and lethal injection since 1985.

Louisiana | Execution by nitrogen gas ‘ugly way to die’: MD

What is it like to be executed by nitrogen gas? Dr. Jonathan Groner, a medical ethicist who studies capital punishment, has not witnessed an execution using this method, but he speculates about what happens to an inmate who is given pure nitrogen to inhale through a mask. “They don’t go quietly, I will say that,” Groner, a professor of surgery at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, told “Banfield” on Wednesday. A federal judge this week halted the state of Louisiana’s plans to execute an inmate for the first time through “nitrogen hypoxia.” State officials plan to appeal the judge’s decision, which raised questions about whether using nitrogen gas is a cruel and unusual punishment.

Violent and sudden. What a firing squad execution looked like through my eyes

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — I’ve now watched through glass and bars as 11 men were put to death at a South Carolina prison. None of the previous 10 prepared me for watching the firing squad death of Brad Sigmon on Friday night. I might now be unique among U.S. reporters: I’ve witnessed three different methods — nine lethal injections and an electric chair execution. I can still hear the thunk of the breaker falling 21 years later. As a journalist you want to ready yourself for an assignment. You research a case. You read about the subject.

Texas | Court stays execution of Texas man days before he was set to die by lethal injection

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas appeals court on Tuesday halted the execution of a man who has spent more than 30 years on death row and had been set to die by lethal injection this week over the killings of six girls and young women found buried in the desert near El Paso. It was the second scheduled execution in the U.S. halted on Tuesday after a federal judge stopped Louisiana’s first death row execution using nitrogen gas, which was to take place next week. In Texas, the order was another reprieve for David Leonard Wood, who in 2009 was about 24 hours away from execution when it was halted over claims he is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for execution.

Iran | Man hanged in Urmia prison; 2 women, including his wife, and man executed at the prison on same day

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); March 17, 2025: Mehdi Faraji, a man on death row for murder, was executed in Urmia Central Prison. Two women including his wife, and a man were previously reported to have been executed at the prison that day. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was hanged in Urmia Central Prison on 16 March. His identity has been established as Hamed Faraji who was sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder. IHRNGO previously reported the executions of Mojgan Azarpisheh, Kosar Bagherzadeh and Arshad Farzadband at the prison that day.

America’s next killing spree: 10 days, five states, six death-row prisoners set to die

Desolate spectacle of executions begins again under Trump, in landscape of capital punishment as riven as US is as a whole David Leonard Wood. Jessie Hoffman. Aaron Gunches. Wendell Grissom. Edward Thomas James. Moises Sandoval Mendoza. So many names. So many dead men walking. Ten days, five states, six death row prisoners scheduled for execution. For a decade now, capital punishment in the US has been on the wane. Last year, for the 10th year running, there were fewer than 30 executions in America, and the number of new death sentences is also tracking at historic lows.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog