BATON ROUGE, La. — A Louisiana man on death row is pleading with a judge not to be executed by gas just days before he’s scheduled for his capital punishment. Jessie Hoffman is expected to be executed by the state on March 18th by nitrogen hypoxia, the state’s newest method of capital punishment, after a 15-year hiatus.
Last year, the state legislature approved execution using gas after difficulty obtaining drugs for lethal injection.
Hoffman is expected to be one of the first prisoners executed by this newly approved method, but his arguments could halt not only his execution but others in the state. Hoffman, who is convicted in St. Tammany of the 1996 kidnapping, rape and murder of Mary “Molly” Elliot is arguing the method goes against his religion and is cruel and unusual — stating the gassing would cause more pain and suffering than just his sentence of death…