Capital box
By Amy Howe
on 18 Mar 2025
At. 20.20
A shared Supreme Court refused to block the execution of Jessie Hoffman, who was killed on Tuesday night in Louisiana. Four Justices would have put Hoffman’s execution on wait – a card of the five needed for a stay.
Hoffman was sentenced to death for kidnapping, robbery, rape and murder of Mary “Molly” Elliott. Last month, Louisiana announced his plans to use nitrogen hypoxia, the use of nitrogen gas to cause suffocation, to executions. The state informed Hoffman 10 days later that it would use the procedure.
Hoffman traveled to the Federal Court to challenge the planned method of execution and argued that it violated both eighth amendment to cruel and unusual punishment and a federal law, the law of religious land use and institutionalized persons who protect the religious freedoms of the prisoners. Hoffman, a practicing Buddhist, claimed that the use of nitrogenassing would disrupt his ability to follow a Buddhist tradition of meditative breathing at the time of death.
A federal court in Louisiana remained Hoffman’s execution and accepted that he would probably prevail over his claim that the use of nitrogen hypoxia would violate the eighth change. The US Appeals Court for the 5th Circuit lifted the order of the court, prompting Hoffman to come to the Supreme Court on Sunday to apply for a stay in his execution and review of the 5th circuit decision.
In a brief unsigned order, the court rejected Hoffman’s request to remain his execution. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson indicated without any explanation that they would have given his application.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a dissent in two parts from the decision to let Hoffman’s execution move on. Gorsuch noted that the court of law had rejected Hoffman’s religious freedom requirement “based on his own ‘Find[ing]’About that kind of breathing Mr. Hoffman’s belief requires. ‘ But this conclusion, Gorsuch emphasized, “violated the basic principle” that courts should not weigh on whether anyone’s religious beliefs are sincere.
Furthermore, Gorsuch continued that the 5th circuit did not deal with this “seemingly legal error” or even Hoffman’s religious freedom requirements in itself. The lack of doing so justified Gorsuch, leaving the Supreme Court “bad position to tackle it.” He would therefore have given both Hoffman’s request for a stay and his petition for review, thrown out of the 5th circuit’s decision and sent the case back to the right of appeal in order for it to consider the religious freedom requirement.
The court is not yet scheduled to act after Hoffman’s petition for review. If Hoffman is executed as planned, the petition will be thrown out as no longer an active controversy.
This article was originally published on Howe on the field.
