As reported in this NBC News piece, 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.” Here is more:
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….
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.”
UPDATE: The 29-page ruling by Chief Judge Dick is available at this link. It will be interesting to see how and how quickly the Fifth Circuit ruling on this matter and whether and when it may come before the US Supreme Court.