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Louisiana hopes to carry out its first nitrogen gas execution today

Louisiana hopes to carry out its first nitrogen gas execution today

Sakege017 mins

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  • Jessie Hoffman will execute on Tuesday for the violation and murder of a dear 28 -year -old accounting executive named Molly Elliott.
  • The lawyers of the inmate of the Sliding of Death Jessie Hoffman have argued that it should not be executed by the controversial and largely not proven and that it violates their religious freedoms.
  • Although a judge blocked the execution last week about concerns about the constitutionality of the nitrogen gas method, the ruling was quickly revoked in appeal. Another judge could intervene on Tuesday.

Louisiana officials plan to carry out their first execution of Nitrogen Gas on Tuesday. The inmate of the death corridor Jessie Hoffman He hopes that an era audience at the time can avoid his life.

Hoffman’s lawyers say deeply laments the brutal rape and murder of 28 years. Molly Elliott In 1996, but should not be executed by the controversial method and largely not proven, partly because it violates his religious freedoms. Only a state, AlabamaHe has used nitrogen gas to kill inmates, making history with his First execution of this type last year.

Hoffman, 46, is scheduled to die on Tuesday despite the order of a judge last week stopping its execution In a ruling that was revoked by the Appeals Court of the 5th United States Circuit on Friday. Hoffman’s lawyers appealed that, and the matter is with the United States Supreme Court.

On Monday, a Louisiana judge established a last -minute hearing on a separate presentation in which Hoffman’s lawyers focus on a state law that say “prohibits the government from interfering with the exercise of religious faith.”

The attorney general of Louisiana, Liz Murrill, criticized the measure as “an attempt to see what will stay” and said in a statement that he hopes that “the execution progresses as planned.”

If so, it will be the first of Louisiana in 15 years and that of the nation Seventh this year. Three other executions, all by lethal injection, are also scheduled this week in ArizonaOklahoma and Florida.

This is what you should know about the execution of Hoffman, including more about Tuesday’s audience that could alter your destination.

What did Jessie Hoffman do?

Molly Elliott left the work in her advertising firm in the French neighborhood of New Orleans around 5 PM of November 27, 1996, and walked to the Sheraton hotel garage, where she parked her car. She was supposed to meet her husband in her office at 6 pm so that they could go to dinner together, police told journalists at that time.

Hoffman, who was only 18 years old and had worked in the garage for about two weeks, kidnapped her at gunpoint and forced her to remove around $ 200 from an ATM, Prosecutors said. Even if Hoffman had let her go at that time, prosecutors said she would have been “the most horrible night of her life.”

“The ATM video tape shows the terror in Mrs. Elliott’s face as she withdrew money from her account, and you can see Hoffman standing next to her victim,” prosecutors said in the judicial records.

After obtaining the cash, Hoffman forced Elliott to lead to a remote area of ​​St. Tammany’s parish while begging him not to hurt her, prosecutors said, citing Hoffman’s eventual confession to the crime. Hoffman then raped Elliott and forced her to leave the car and walk on a dirt road in an area used as a garbage dump, prosecutors said.

“His death march finally ended up on a small and improvised dock at the end of this road, where he was forced to kneel and shoot in the head, execution style,” they said. “Mrs. Elliott probably survived for a few minutes after she shot, but stayed at the dock, completely naked on a cold November night, to die.”

Her husband identified her body after she was found on Thanksgiving, prosecutors said.

Hoffman recognizes the crime and is deeply repentant, said his lawyer, Cecelia Kappel, to USA Today.

“He takes fully responsible for this very tragic and horrible crime,” he said. “Molly Elliott’s family lament a lot and wishes to have the opportunity before he dies of having a face -to -face conversation where he can apologize in person.”

Read more about Molly Elliott: Husband, mother remembers the remarkable young woman

Who is Jessie Hoffman?

Criado and its surroundings of housing projects in New Orleans, Hoffman grew in an “overwhelming environment, violence, poverty and substance abuse,” according to Hoffman’s clemency request.

Hoffman experienced physical, sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of the closest to him, and witnessed multiple stabbings, shootings and fatal murders, in addition to losing seven family members to kill, they wrote their lawyers in their application for clemency.

When he was only 14 months old, Kappel said that Hoffman’s mother burned her hand on a stove as punishment, requiring a 19 -day hospital stay and leaving him with a shattered hand.

“This guy was physically and mentally tortured through child abuse and was not helped by social services or the system,” said his lawyer, Kappel. “It was abandoned. And now the State is trying to torture it until death even though it has shown that it is capable of rehabilitation, change and remorse.”

She said Hoffman has become a different man than the one who was capable of such a brutal murder.

“Through its internal recovery process and the healing of fragmented memories, Jessie could also consider more completely the depth of the damage it has caused,” according to his clementia request presented to the Louisiana Prat Board. “Anyone who knows it can attest to how deeply repentant and worried is about what he has done and the damage he caused when taking the life of Molly Elliott.”

Hoffman, the father of a son born after his imprisonment, became a Buddhist about 20 years ago, finding him “a structure and moral practice that has guided and nourished, helped him find peace and heal,” according to his request for clemency.

When and where is Jessie Hoffman’s execution?

Jessie Hoffman will run just after 6 PM CT in the penitentiary of the state of Louisiana in Angola, Louisiana.

How will Jessie Hoffman be executed?

Louisiana plans to run Hoffman using Nitrogen gasthat will deprive it of oxygen while inhala nitrogen through a mask and suffocation. “All execution processes will be carried out professionally, human, sensitively and dignifiedly,” according to the state execution protocols obtained by USA Today.

Alabama became the first state of the nation To use the method Last year and remains the only one to do so, although it is also legal in Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma. The governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has a bill waiting for your approval to use the method in your state, while Ohio and Nebraska They have reintroduced similar legislation this year.

Last week, the main district judge Shelly Dick temporarily blocked Hoffman’s execution, saying that he could cause “pain and terror” and that he showed a “substantial probability” to demonstrate that gas nitrogen executions violate the prohibition of the eighth amendment against cruel and unusual punishment.

Dick cited stories of Alabama’s four executions that “describe suffering, including conscious terror for several minutes, trembling, panting and other anguish tests.”

The witnesses observed the bodies of the inmates “twisting” under their restrictions “, convulsing and trembling vigorous for four minutes,” stirring, spitting and a “conscious struggle for life.”

Alabama’s attorney general Steve Marshall, has defended the method as “constitutional and effective”, and the attorney general of Louisiana, Liz Murrill, has argued in the judicial records that witnesses accounts of the members of the media are not reliable.

He 5th Court of Appeals of the United States Circuit He voree Dick’s ruling on Friday, and the matter is now with the United States Supreme Court.

Can a Louisiana judge stop the execution of Hoffman?

Louisiana judge, Richard Moore, celebrates a hearing on Tuesday on whether Hoffman’s right to practice religion.

He established the hearing in response to a presentation of Hoffman’s lawyers arguing that “a central component of his Buddhist practice is to breathe meditation and techniques.”

“Mr. Hoffman sincerely believes that he must practice his Buddhist breathing exercises in the critical transition between life and death,” they said. “He believes that if he has traumatic ending, they can lead to a negative rebirth.”

Attorney General Murrill has argued in judicial documents that nitrogen gas does not represent “a substantial risk of severe pain” and cited a judicial case that determined that “each method of execution implies a period during which the inmate experiences psychological pain because he realizes that death is imminent.”

“That does not make its execution automatically unconstitutional,” he wrote.

In the event that Moore governs in favor of Hoffman on Tuesday and orders that his executed stopped, Murrill promised to appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court.

‘Horrible’ and ‘cruel?’ Louisiana about to find out nitrogen gas executions

What does Molly Elliott’s family say?

Molly Elliott’s husband, Andy Elliott, tells USA Today that 29 years after his wife’s murder, “he has become indifferent to the death penalty in front of life in prison without the possibility of probation.” But he said he is in favor of execution if it is the easiest way to finish “the uncertainty that has accompanied these many years.”

“But, his death will not provide closure,” he continued. “Anyone who has experienced a tragedy of this magnitude will recognize the absolute truth: Molly’s and my families and friends lost a great human being due to a series of meaningless crimes, the reasons why we still do not know. Pain is something that we have simply learned to live.”

He added that “all we want is the purpose, so we can stop fearing the tragedy reminder every time the issue of its execution brings together.”

“My sincere hope is to make the execution or travel its sentence to life imprisonment without probation, one or the other, as soon as possible,” he said. “So, we can put Molly’s brutal death in the past. That is not the closure, but it is the best we can expect.”

Contributing: N’dea Yancey-BreggUSA today

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