U.S. | Four Executions in Three Days Spotlight Constitutional Concerns About Death Penalty

In a three-day span from March 18 to March 20, four men were exe­cut­ed in four dif­fer­ent states. Two of the men put to death, in Louisiana and Arizona, were the first exe­cut­ed in their state in years. While the close tim­ing of the exe­cu­tions result­ed from inde­pen­dent state-lev­el deci­sions and indi­vid­u­al­ized legal devel­op­ments rather than any coor­di­nat­ed nation­al effort, all four exe­cu­tions raised seri­ous constitutional concerns.

March 18: Jessie Hoffman (LA)

On March 18, Louisiana exe­cut­ed Jessie Hoffman, mark­ing the state’s first exe­cu­tion in 15 years and the first exe­cu­tion by nitro­gen gas out­side Alabama, where the method was used for the first time last year. Mr. Hoffman’s exe­cu­tion went for­ward despite con­cerns that the nitro­gen gas method vio­lat­ed his reli­gious free­dom and would cause him ​“pain and ter­ror” in vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment. Mr. Hoffman was a prac­tic­ing Buddhist for over two decades, his attor­neys wrote in a Supreme Court fil­ing, and ​“in Buddhist tra­di­tion, med­i­ta­tive breath­ing at the time of death car­ries pro­found spir­i­tu­al sig­nif­i­cance, found­ed in the core belief that med­i­ta­tion and unfet­tered breath at the time of tran­si­tion from life to death deter­mines the qual­i­ty of rebirth.” By con­trast, ​“nitro­gen gassing would pre­vent Mr. Hoffman from engag­ing in con­scious med­i­ta­tion by alter­ing the breath­ing process and cre­at­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal distress…feelings of pan­ic and air hunger.” 

Two courts issued stays of exe­cu­tion — one based on Mr. Hoffman’s reli­gious free­dom claim, one based on his cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment Eighth Amendment claim — but both stays were ulti­mate­ly lift­ed. On Tuesday evening, the Supreme Court denied Mr. Hoffman’s final appli­ca­tion for a stay over the dis­sent­ing votes of four jus­tices. (The Court requires only four votes to hear a case, but five to grant a stay.) Justice Neil Gorsuch, in his first dis­sent from denial of a stay of exe­cu­tion since he joined the Court in 2017, wrote that he would have grant­ed the stay and remand­ed for the Fifth Circuit to prop­er­ly deter­mine whether Mr. Hoffman’s exe­cu­tion by nitro­gen gas vio­lat­ed his rights under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). Justice Gorsuch wrote that a low­er court had improp­er­ly imposed its own judg­ment ​“about the kind of breath­ing Mr. Hoffman’s faith requires…contraven[ing] the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple that courts have ​‘no license to declare…whether an adher­ent has ​“cor­rect­ly per­ceived” the com­mands of his religion.’”

The local Jewish com­mu­ni­ty protest­ed Mr. Hoffman’s exe­cu­tion, draw­ing par­al­lels to the Nazis’ use of poi­son gas to mur­der near­ly half of the six mil­lion Jews killed in the Holocaust. ​“To use a method that was a form of state-sanc­tioned mur­der and geno­cide of lit­er­al­ly mil­lions of people…to re-imple­ment that as a form of jus­tice in 21st-cen­tu­ry Louisiana seems to us equal­ly abhor­rent, because of the way that method of exe­cu­tion is so hor­ri­bly and intrin­si­cal­ly linked to the dec­i­ma­tion of our peo­ple,” said Naomi Yavneh Klos, a mem­ber of the Jews Against Gassing Coalition and pro­fes­sor at Loyola University New Orleans.

Mr. Hoffman’s age at the time of his offense — just 18 years old — also raised con­cerns. Had he been three months younger, he would not have been eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty, based on the Supreme Court’s recog­ni­tion that juve­niles are less cul­pa­ble for cap­i­tal crimes because their brains have not ful­ly devel­oped. Scientists have con­sis­tent­ly found that ​“emerg­ing adults” under age 21, like Mr. Hoffman, exhib­it many of the same cog­ni­tive deficits and imma­ture behav­iors as juve­niles. He was sen­tenced to death for the rob­bery, rape, and mur­der of a 28-year-old woman whom he abduct­ed from the park­ing garage where he worked.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who worked to imple­ment the new nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, took office in January 2024 after run­ning on a cam­paign to resume exe­cu­tions. As the state’s Attorney General, he had tak­en unprece­dent­ed legal efforts to block out­go­ing Gov. John Bel Edwards from com­mut­ing any death sen­tences in 2023. (For more infor­ma­tion on how elect­ed offi­cials politi­cize cap­i­tal cas­es, despite decreas­ing vot­er sup­port for the death penal­ty, read DPI’s Lethal Election report.)

March 19: Aaron Gunches (AZ)

On March 19, Aaron Gunches was put to death in Arizona after years of seek­ing his own exe­cu­tion, becom­ing the 167th ​“vol­un­teer” in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty. A DPI study found that death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers seek their own exe­cu­tion at ten times the sui­cide rate of the gen­er­al pub­lic, and 85% of vol­un­teers are white men like Mr. Gunches. And like Mr. Gunches, who had a his­to­ry of heavy drug use and sui­ci­dal behav­ior, 87% of vol­un­teers suf­fer from men­tal ill­ness, addic­tion, or both. Mr. Gunches sought to rep­re­sent him­self, waive appeals, and eschew his legal rights at vir­tu­al­ly every stage of pro­ceed­ings, prompt­ing a judge on one occa­sion to ask if he was try­ing to ​“com­mit sui­cide by jury.” Because Mr. Gunches pre­sent­ed noth­ing in his own defense, no jury ever heard mit­i­ga­tion evi­dence about his life.

His exe­cu­tion came after sev­er­al years of polit­i­cal bat­tles over Arizona’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. Corrections offi­cers strug­gled to set IV lines in all three Arizona exe­cu­tions in 2022, prompt­ing Gov. Katie Hobbs to impose a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions and order an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion when she took office in 2023. Last year, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell sought to force the state to resume exe­cu­tions, but her legal efforts became moot when Gov. Hobbs abrupt­ly fired the retired mag­is­trate judge con­duct­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion in November 2024 and sub­se­quent­ly lift­ed the mora­to­ri­um. The judge, David Duncan, has since shared dis­turb­ing details from his inves­ti­ga­tion, includ­ing the fact that lethal injec­tion team mem­bers researched drug dosages on Wikipedia the night before an exe­cu­tion. Judge Duncan con­tends that he was dis­missed because he asked the state to pro­vide tax records for secret $20,000 cash pay­ments to prison offi­cials involved in the botched exe­cu­tions. But the Arizona Supreme Court grant­ed Mr. Gunches’ request for his own exe­cu­tion date to be set, and he died by lethal injec­tion at 10:33 a.m.

March 20: Wendell Grissom (OK)

Wendell Grissom died by lethal injec­tion just after 10:00 a.m. in Oklahoma. He was sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of a young woman dur­ing a home inva­sion rob­bery. He also shot the home­own­er, Dreu Kopf, who man­aged to escape; the mur­der occurred in front of Ms. Kopf’s two young daugh­ters, who also sur­vived. Mr. Grissom apol­o­gized to Ms. Kopf, her daugh­ters, and vic­tim fam­i­ly mem­bers in his last words. ​“He can­not change the past, but he is now and always has been deeply ashamed and remorse­ful,” said his attor­ney Kristi Christopher.

Mr. Grissom’s attor­neys also high­light­ed his his­to­ry of brain dam­age, which his jury nev­er heard. Mr. Grissom expe­ri­enced pro­longed oxy­gen depri­va­tion dur­ing birth and exhib­it­ed devel­op­men­tal delays as a young child, to the point that his par­ents strug­gled to under­stand him. He then suf­fered mul­ti­ple head injuries in motor­cy­cle acci­dents between ages 8 and 16 that left him with severe headaches, behav­ioral changes, mood prob­lems, and sub­stance addic­tion. In a February 2025 clemen­cy hear­ing, his attor­neys said that sev­er­al jurors, includ­ing the jury fore­man, had con­firmed that they would have like­ly vot­ed for a life sen­tence if they had known about his brain damage.

March 20: Edward James (FL)

Edward James died by lethal injec­tion at 8:15 p.m. in Florida, after his exe­cu­tion was delayed two hours. Though the state gave no expla­na­tion for the delay, news out­lets con­firmed that Gov. Ron DeSantis had trav­eled to the White House for President Trump’s 4 p.m. sign­ing of an exec­u­tive order to dis­man­tle the Department of Education. ​“The death penal­ty should nev­er be wield­ed as a polit­i­cal weapon,” Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) said in a state­ment fol­low­ing the exe­cu­tion. ​“While peo­ple may dis­agree on whether or not the death penal­ty is an appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment, there should be no dis­pute that the process, espe­cial­ly when car­ry­ing out an exe­cu­tion, should be met with solem­ni­ty and dig­ni­ty, and not whim­si­cal­ly moved around to accom­mo­date polit­i­cal sched­ules and photo ops.”

Mr. James was sen­tenced to death in 1995 for mur­der­ing a woman and her 8‑year-old grand­daugh­ter, and sex­u­al­ly assault­ing the grand­daugh­ter, while pro­found­ly intox­i­cat­ed on alco­hol and LSD. One of his jurors vot­ed for a life sen­tence, which would have spared Mr. James’ life in every state but Alabama and Florida.1 In 2016 the Florida Supreme Court held that non-unan­i­mous death sen­tences were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, giv­ing near­ly 150 peo­ple on Florida’s death row an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a new sen­tenc­ing tri­al — 81% of whom have since been resen­tenced to life accord­ing to DPI’s research. But even though Mr. James’ sen­tence was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under that rul­ing, he did not receive a resen­tenc­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty because his con­vic­tion became final in 1997, and the Florida Supreme Court lim­it­ed its relief to peo­ple whose con­vic­tions became final in 2002 or lat­er.2

Mr. James’ attor­neys argued that Mr. James was no longer com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed after a heart attack in January 2023 left him deprived of oxy­gen for an extend­ed peri­od, com­pound­ing brain dam­age from years of sub­stance abuse and pri­or seri­ous head injuries. They alleged that a CT scan fol­low­ing the heart attack, which revealed ​“long­stand­ing brain dete­ri­o­ra­tion,” was not dis­closed to the defense until last month. Mr. James also served in the Army; the Supreme Court has rec­og­nized that ​“Our Nation has a long tra­di­tion of accord­ing lenien­cy to vet­er­ans in recog­ni­tion of their ser­vice,” but DPI has found that mil­i­tary vet­er­ans appear to be over­rep­re­sent­ed on death row and that courts uneven­ly weigh mil­i­tary ser­vice as a mitigating factor.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Leah Roemer, March 24, 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