A federal judge has partially rejected a motion by the Louisiana attorney general to dismiss death row inmate Jessie Hoffman's lawsuit, which challengers the state’s planned use of nitrogen gas to execute Hoffman for raping and murdering a woman in 1996.
Attorney General Liz Murrill argued that Hoffman’s request for a preliminary injunction to stay his scheduled March 18 execution by nitrogen hypoxia should be rejected or dismissed outright. But federal Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle District of Louisiana on Thursday denied the attorney general’s motion relating to several counts advanced by the plaintiff’s attorneys.
Dick’s ruling means that a temporary stay of execution could be approved based on Hoffman’s Eighth Amendment claims of cruel and unusual punishment, his claim that a 2024 state statute changing acceptable execution methods amounts to an ex-post-facto law and his claim about his counsel being denied access to new execution protocols.
A hearing began on Friday in Dick’s courtroom to consider whether a stay of execution is warranted on those claims. The hearing may be extended to Saturday.
The judge dismissed with prejudice Hoffman’s claims that the defendants have not disclosed adequate information about the drafting of the execution protocol or procedures and that the execution procedures violate his right to engage in Buddhist religion practices during the execution.
The plaintiff’s arguments in support of a preliminary injunction raise weighty legal challenges, according to Hoffman’s attorneys.
“This court should require the state to answer basic questions and provide basic and critical facts on the method it intends to use and how it will be implemented, and the execution should be stayed by preliminary injunction to allow for a reasonable period of expedited discovery, briefing and a hearing with experts so that this case may be decided on a developed record,” a memorandum filed by the plaintiff’s attorneys states.
Murrill’s motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s quest for an injunction is based partly on an expert opinion stating that during the nitrogen hypoxia process, the inmate would lose consciousness within about 40 seconds and that death would occur within 10 to 15 minutes “without suffering or pain.”
The United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, however, has reported that nitrogen hypoxia may amount to inhuman treatment or torture.
Nitrogen gassing has been used for executions four times, all of them in Alabama, according to the plaintiff’s attorneys.
“Louisiana has not carried out an involuntary execution in more than 20 years,” one of Hoffman’s attorneys, Cecelia Kappel, said in a statement emailed to the Louisiana Record. “There is no good reason for the state to barrel ahead with this untested and dangerous method before the court has a full and fair opportunity to assess its constitutionality. This is especially true given the horrifying accounts from eyewitnesses to Alabama’s nitrogen gas executions.”
Murrill’s court motions stress the heinousness of Hoffman’s crime. In 1996, the plaintiff kidnapped, raped, robbed and then murdered Mary “Molly” Elliott, leaving her body in a remote area near Middle Pearl River. Her body was later found by a duck hunter.
The attorney general has also emphasized the need to bring “justice to the family and friends” of Mary Elliott.