Inmate executed with nitrogen gas after Supreme Court declines to intervene, with 4 dissents
A Louisiana death row inmate was executed Tuesday by nitrogen gas, the first time that the execution method was used in Louisiana and the fifth time that it was used in the United States. (Image from Shutterstock)
A Louisiana death row inmate was executed Tuesday by nitrogen gas, the first time that the execution method was used in Louisiana and the fifth time that it was used in the United States.
Inmate Jessie Hoffman Jr. was put to death after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant an emergency stay in a 5-4 decision, report SCOTUSblog, Law.com, Bloomberg Law, the New York Times, the Associated Press and NOLA.com.
Justice Neil Gorsuch and the high court’s three liberal justices would have granted the stay.
Hoffman’s lawyers had argued that nitrogen hypoxia produces a death by suffocation that causes “psychological terror” amounting to cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The lawyers also argued that a nitrogen death would interfere with Hoffman’s meditative breathing, a practice used in his Buddhist religion.
The Supreme Court’s liberal justices did not indicate why they would have granted a stay of execution. Gorsuch said he would have granted the stay and sent the case back to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans to determine whether the meditative breathing claim amounted to a violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
Hoffman was executed for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Mary “Molly” Elliot in 1998.
Hoffman started twitching after the gas began flowing at 6:21 p.m., according to the AP, which cited information from media witnesses. He clenched his hands and slightly moved his head. He appeared to stop breathing at 6:37 p.m. He was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m.
Seth Smith, chief of operations at the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, said he thinks that the convulsions were an “involuntary response to dying” that happened when Hoffman was apparently unconscious, according to the AP.
A Buddhist spiritual adviser was with Hoffman when he died.
The four previous executions by nitrogen hypoxia were all in Alabama. A total of five states allow such executions. Besides Alabama and Louisiana they are Mississippi, Oklahoma and Arkansas, which approved the method in a bill signed into law Tuesday, according to the AP.
Four other states allow “lethal gas” without specifying the type, according to the New York Times, which cited information from the Death Penalty Information Center. They are Arizona, California, Missouri and Wyoming.
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