Trigger warning: this article contains mentions of an execution and rape, which may distress some readers.
A murderer named Jessie Hoffman Jr met his maker in a controversial fashion this week after spending 27 years on Louisiana’s Death Row.
Convicted in 1998 for raping and killing Mary ‘Molly’ Elliott in the first-degree, he was finally put to death on Tuesday (18 March) via nitrogen hypoxia, a banned method for euthanising cats and dogs, as it’s said to cause severe distress.
The crime took place in New Orleans, with Hoffman Jr initially abducting his victim from a parking lot before assaulting and shooting her.
This was the first execution of its kind in the US state, although the criminal’s legal team had hoped to prevent it at the eleventh hour with the help of a court ruling. This claimed that nitrogen ‘substantially burdens’ a demonstration of Hoffman Jr’s Buddhist faith by denying him the chance to meditatively breathe as his last seconds of life ticked by.
Hoffman Jr’s case gets even more significant though, because his final words marked a rare moment in death row history.
The 46-year-old death row inmate is apparently a Buddhist now, and death by gas would interfere with his beliefs (Jessie Hoffman Legal Team)
Despite an almost three-decade incarceration, in which the inmate will have no doubt contemplated a life wasted, this resulted in precisely no final statement or food.
Commenting on her client’s unconventional punishment, attorney Cecelia Kappel noted: “Jessie no longer bore any resemblance to the 18-year-old who killed Molly Elliott. 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.”
Meanwhile, his victim’s husband Andy Elliott shared: “There is relief that this long nightmare is finally over but also renewed grief for Molly and sadness for Mr. Hoffman’s family, whose nightmare began when mine did and who’ve also had to go through nearly 30 years of this gut-wrenching process through no fault of their own.”
According to eye-witnesses of the execution, Hoffman Jr began to experience ‘convulsive activity’ upon its commencement, yet they each concurred that nothing seemed out of the ordinary when scrutinised against the protocols.
Chief of Operations at the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, Seth Smith, was present at the scene and went on to confirm Hoffman Jr’s spasms.
He perceived these convulsions to be an “involuntary response to dying”, with Hoffman Jr apparently unconscious at the time.
Hoffman Jr was pronounced dead at 6.50pm local time, with the gas flow taking 19 minutes to end his life.
