Louisiana conducts its first nitrogen gas execution, ending 15-year death penalty hiatus
24th March 2025 · 0 Comments
By Greg LaRose
Contributing Writer
(lailluminator.com) — Jessie Hoffman was put to death Tuesday evening at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, becoming the first person in the state executed using nitrogen gas.
It also marked the first time Louisiana has carried out the death penalty in 15 years, citing its inability to obtain the drugs necessary for lethal injection. With no foreseeable sources to resuming using that method, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and the GOP-dominated state legislature approved nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative.
Alabama is the only other state to have used the technique, having put four condemned men to death since adopting the method in February 2024.
“It went flawless. There was nothing that happened incorrectly,” Gary Westcott, secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Public Safety and Corrections, told reporters after Hoffman’s execution, according to WAFB-TV.
Hoffman, 46, was executed for the 1996 kidnapping, rape and murder of 28-year-old Mary “Molly” Elliot.
Investigators said Hoffman abducted Elliot at a downtown New Orleans parking lot where he was a valet and where she parked daily for her job at an advertising agency. She was taken to rural St. Tammany Parish, where she was assaulted and fatally shot the day before Thanksgiving. A hunter found her nude body the next day at a remote boat launch near the Pearl River.
Landry’s office issued a statement from him after Hoffman’s execution. It stressed how Elliot’s “family and friends have been forced to relive the tragedy through countless legal proceedings.”
“In Louisiana, we will always prioritize victims over criminals, law and order over lawlessness, and justice over the status quo,” Landry said. ”If you commit heinous acts of violence in this State, it will cost you your life. Plain and simple.”
Lawyers for Hoffman, seeking a last-minute reprieve from his death sentence being carried out, argued nitrogen hypoxia amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, prohibited under the Eighth Amendment. Hoffman instead sought death by firing squad or lethal injection, acknowledging his responsibility for Elliot’s violent death.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of Louisiana’s Middle District Court, temporarily blocked Hoffman’s execution date to allow that argument to proceed. Attorney General Liz Murrill challenged that order. Last week, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals removed the injunction from Dick, a federal court appointee of former President Barack Obama. In a 5-4 decision late Tuesday afternoon, the Supreme Court refused to stop Hoffman’s execution.
Cecelia Koppel, one of Hoffman’s attorneys and director of the Center for Social Justice at Loyola University College of Law, issued a statement shortly after Hoffman’s death.
“Tonight, the State of Louisiana carried out the senseless execution of Jessie Hoffman,” Koppell said. “He was a father, a husband, and a man who showed extraordinary capacity for redemption. Jessie no longer bore any resemblance to the 18-year old who killed Molly Elliot.”
Koppel had unsuccessfully challenged Louisiana’s move to nitrogen hypoxia, arguing the method was an illegal affront to Hoffman’s Buddhist faith. Justice Neil Gorsuch, an appointee of President Donald Trump, joined the court’s three liberal jurists and wrote the dissenting opinion, calling out the 5th Circuit’s failure to address Hoffman’s religious concerns.
The expedited nature of Louisiana’s nitrogen hypoxia protocols was also a point of contention for Koppel. Although Landry and lawmakers approved the method last year, the governor didn’t provide the legally required execution protocol until Feb. 10. Those details remained under seal until March 5, giving Hoffman’s team less than two weeks to challenge the pending execution.
“The State was able to execute him by pushing out a new protocol and setting execution dates to prevent careful judicial review and shrouding the process in secrecy,” Koppel said.
State corrections officials allowed only two journalists to witness the execution. According to The Advocate, Hoffman was fastened to a gurney and inhaled nitrogen gas for 19 minutes. State officials said he displayed “convulsive activity” as he died, and he was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m.
Hoffman declined to make a final statement before his death and refused a last meal, according to the report.
Ilona Hoffman, the executed man’s wife, issued a statement that said he “was not defined by his worst moment” and that the “system” had failed him as a child.
“This execution was not justice. It was revenge,” Ilona Hoffman said. “True justice recognizes growth, humanity, and redemption. Louisiana chose to ignore that.”
The Promise of Justice Initiative, which opposes the death penalty, was among the groups in Hoffman’s corner. Its senior staff attorney, Samantha Pourciau, took critical aim at the Landry administration in a statement after his death.
“Governor Landry’s yearslong pursuit of this execution concluded with more pain and more trauma. Tonight, while many in our state cannot afford groceries, the state used countless resources to kill one man,” Pourciau said in part. “The governor cannot cloak this in fighting for victims, because today we learned that this is not, in fact, what this family wants. This is what the governor wants. This has been in service of no one, but the bloodlust of our state government.”
There are 55 more people on death row in Louisiana, and Murrill has said the state intends to execute four people this year.
This article originally published in the March 24, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
