Louisiana’s first nitrogen gas execution blocked by federal judge
A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked Louisiana’s first execution in 15 years after lawyers for the condemned man argued a new method known as nitrogen hypoxia would violate his constitutional rights.
The inmate, Jessie Hoffman Jr., 46, said the use of a mask to deliver only nitrogen gas, depriving him of oxygen, “substantially burdens” his ability to engage in his Buddhist breathing practices and creates “superadded pain and suffering.”
Hoffman’s execution, scheduled for March 18, was set to be the first in Louisiana using nitrogen hypoxia.
Chief U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle Louisiana District ruled in partial favor of Hoffman, writing that it is in the “best interests of the public” to be able to examine the state’s “newly proposed method of execution on a fully developed record.” She said she was particularly troubled that the state released only a redacted protocol to the public until the day before the preliminary injunction hearing Friday.
“The public has paramount interest in a legal process that enables thoughtful and well-informed deliberations, particularly when the ultimate fundamental right, the right to life, is placed in the government’s hands,” she wrote.
She said Hoffman cannot be executed until his claims are “decided after a trial on the merits and a final judgment is issued.”
Attorney General Liz Murrill posted on X that “we disagree with the district court’s decision and will immediately appeal to the Fifth Circuit,” which her office did.
Hoffman’s planned execution was set for a particularly busy week of executions in America, with five states, including Louisiana, expected to carry out punishment.
In 1996, Hoffman was 18 when, prosecutors say, he abducted his victim, Mary Elliott, at gunpoint from a New Orleans parking garage on the night before Thanksgiving Day, forced her to withdraw $200 from an ATM, then raped and shot her to death.
State Corrections Secretary Gary Westcott selected nitrogen hypoxia as Hoffman’s method of execution. Last year, the state legalized the use of nitrogen gas in addition to the more widely used method of lethal injection, but officials have had trouble procuring the necessary lethal injection drugs since the state’s last execution in 2010. More than 50 people are on Louisiana’s death row.
Alabama has had similar trouble sourcing lethal injection drugs, and last year it became the first state to administer nitrogen hypoxia. It has executed four prisoners using the method, one of them last month.
Louisiana corrections officials said they traveled to Alabama to study how its nitrogen system functions. Louisiana subsequently built a nitrogen hypoxia facility at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola consisting of an execution chamber, a valve and storage room, and an observation area.
The state said in a court filing Sunday that “breathing in the mask is ‘very comfortabl[e]'” and that “the mask is very similar, if not identical, to the one used in Alabama’s system.”
At a hearing last week seeking a preliminary injunction, Hoffman testified that he began practicing Buddhism in 2002 after his grandmother died. He said he believed having a mask on his face would only worsen his trauma and claustrophobia stemming from having been locked in a closet as a young child by his brother.
He said that his breathing recently helped him to remain calm when he was moved to a smaller cell in anticipation of his execution and that the surroundings “triggered anxiety of small spaces.”
Dr. Philip Bickler, the chief of neuro-anesthesia at the University of California, San Francisco, testified that the sensation nitrogen hypoxia provides is “very similar to drowning.”
“I think for someone like Mr. Hoffman, nitrogen asphyxiation would be a particularly horrible method, a really inhumane choice for an individual who has a history of PTSD,” Bickler said.
The state’s experts rejected the idea that death by nitrogen hypoxia would subject Hoffman to unconstitutional pain and said the “only material dispute” is how long it may take for him to become unconscious as he begins to breathe nitrogen.
At the hearing, the state also cross-examined a Zen Buddhist priest testifying for Hoffman and noted that while she “maintained that air is important to the practice, she was unable to identify any doctrine within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that required oxygen in particular.”
Critics of nitrogen hypoxia have included the Louisiana group Jews Against Gassing, whose members have said the method “echoes” the Holocaust.
Medical experts have also warned that if the procedure is not done properly, even a small amount of oxygen getting into the mask could lead to slow asphyxiation and prolong the time it would take to die.
In previous nitrogen hypoxia executions, media witnesses have described inmates appearing to remain conscious longer than expected and thrashing and shaking on the gurney.
Last month, Gov. Jeff Landry said Louisiana would remain undeterred.
“We will carry out these sentences and justice will be dispensed,” he said.
In opposing nitrogen hypoxia, Hoffman’s lawyers offered other methods they believed would reduce his “risk of harm,” including a firing squad. The option is not legal in Louisiana.
Last week, South Carolina executed its first inmate by firing squad after the prisoner, Brad Sigmon, chose not to die by the alternative methods lethal injection or electrocution.
