Louisiana man asks for last-minute court ruling to halt nitrogen gas execution

News

Louisiana man asks for last-minute court ruling to halt nitrogen gas execution

2025-03-19 00:03 Last Updated At：00:11

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Hours before a Louisiana man is scheduled to be put to death Tuesday, his attorneys are hoping for a last-minute court ruling to halt the state’s first execution by nitrogen gas.

Louisiana plans to use the new method to put Jessie Hoffman Jr., 46, to death Tuesday evening in the state's first execution in 15 years. Nitrogen gas has been used just four other times to execute a person in the United States — all in Alabama, the only other state with a protocol for the method.

Hoffman's lawyers say the method is unconstitutional, violating the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. They also say that it infringes on Hoffman's freedom to practice religion, specifically his Buddhist breathing and meditation in the moments leading up to his death.

Louisiana officials maintain that the method is painless and say it is past time for the state to deliver justice promised to victims' families after a decade and a half hiatus. Attorney General Liz Murrill says that she expects at least four people on Louisiana's death row to be executed this year.

After court battles earlier this month, attorneys for Hoffman are turning to the United States Supreme Court to halt the execution. However, the court declined to intervene in the nation's first nitrogen hypoxia execution last year.

On Monday, Hoffman's attorneys filed a slew of additional challenges in state and federal courts as a last-ditch effort to stop the execution. A state judge will consider one of the new challenges Tuesday morning. But with the hearing taking place just hours before Hoffman is scheduled to be put to death, attorneys will face a race against the clock.

The 19th Judicial District Court judge issued a temporary restraining order — preventing the state from executing Hoffman — pending a morning hearing. Attorneys for Hoffman and the state say their understanding is that the restraining order, as it stands, was to expire at 9:30 a.m. However the execution is scheduled for the evening, hours after the order expires.

Murrill said that she expects the execution to go forward as planned and that “justice will finally be served.” Hoffman was convicted of the 1996 murder of Mary “Molly” Elliott, a 28-year-old advertising executive, in New Orleans.

Under Louisiana protocol, which is nearly identical to Alabama's, Hoffman will be strapped to a gurney and have a full-face respirator mask — similar to what is used by painters and sandblasters — fitted tightly on him. Pure nitrogen gas will then be pumped into the mask, forcing him to breathe it in and depriving him of the oxygen needed to maintain bodily functions.

The nitrogen gas will be administered for at least 15 minutes or five minutes after his heart rate reaches a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer.

Each inmate put to death using nitrogen in Alabama has appeared to shake and gasp to varying degrees during their executions, according to media witnesses, including a reporter form The Associated Press. The reactions are involuntary movements associated with oxygen deprivation, state officials have said.

Currently, four states — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma — specifically authorize execution by nitrogen hypoxia, according to records compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Alabama first used the lethal gas to put Kenneth Eugene Smith to death last year, marking the first time a new method had been used in the U.S. since lethal injection was introduced in 1982.

In an effort to resume executions, Louisiana's GOP-dominated Legislature expanded the state’s approved death penalty methods last year to include nitrogen hypoxia and electrocution. Lethal injection was already in place.

Over recent decades, the number of executions nationally has declined sharply amid legal battles, a shortage of lethal injection drugs and waning public support for capital punishment. That has led a majority of states to either abolish or pause carrying out the death penalty.

Hoffman is scheduled to be the seventh death row execution in the country this year.

White House says Trump and Putin hold call as US seeks Russian sign-off on plan to end Ukraine war

2025-03-19 00:07 Last Updated At：00:11

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have begun a highly anticipated call as the U.S. administration looks to persuade the Russian leader to sign-off on a 30-day ceasefire proposal as a possible pathway to end the war.

Tuesday’s call comes after Ukrainian officials last week agreed to the American proposal during talks in Saudi Arabia led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, however, remains skeptical that Putin is ready for peace as Russian forces continue to pound Ukraine.

Trump, before the call, said he expected to discuss with Putin land and power plants that have been seized during the grinding three-year war. White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino said in a social media posting that the leaders' call began at 10 a.m. Eastern and was “going well.”

The engagement is just the latest turn in dramatically shifting U.S.-Russia relations as Trump made quickly ending the conflict a top priority — even at the expense of straining ties with longtime American allies who want Putin to pay a price for the invasion.

“It’s a bad situation in Russia, and it’s a bad situation in Ukraine,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “What’s happening in Ukraine is not good, but we’re going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace. And I think we’ll be able to do it.”

In preparation for the Trump-Putin call, White House special envoy Steve Witkoff met last week with Putin in Moscow to discuss the proposal. Rubio had persuaded senior Ukrainian officials during talks in Saudi Arabia to agree to the ceasefire framework.

Putin last week said he agreed in principle with the U.S. proposal, but emphasized that Russia would seek guarantees that Ukraine would not use a break in hostilities to rearm and continue mobilization.

The U.S. president said Washington and Moscow have already begun discussing “dividing up certain assets" between Ukraine and Russia as part of a deal to end the conflict.

Trump, who during his campaign pledged to end the war quickly, has at moments boasted of his relationship with Putin and blamed Ukraine for Russia’s unprovoked invasion, all while accusing Zelenskyy of unnecessarily prolonging the biggest land war in Europe since World War II.

Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that Trump and Putin would discuss the war in Ukraine but added that there are also a “large number of questions" regarding normalizing U.S.-Russia relations.

Trump has said that control of land and power plants will be part of the conversation, which comes on the anniversary of Russia annexing Ukraine's Crimean peninsula 11 years ago. That bold land grab by Russia set the stage for Russia to invade its neighbor in 2022.

Witkoff and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested that U.S. and Russian officials have discussed the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — Europe's largest — in southern Ukraine.

The plant has been caught in the crossfire since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in 2022 and seized the facility shortly after. The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly expressed alarm about it, fueling fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe.

The plant is a significant asset, producing nearly a quarter of Ukraine’s electricity in the year before the war.

“I can say we are on the 10th yard line of peace,” Leavitt said. “And we’ve never been closer to a peace deal than we are in this moment. And the president, as you know, is determined to get one done.”

But Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, questioned whether Putin is ready to end the war or will hold out for potential further concessions as Trump grows impatient.

After a disastrous Feb. 28 White House meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump temporarily cut off some military intelligence-sharing and aid to Ukraine. It was restored after the Ukrainians last week signed off on the Trump administration's 30-day ceasefire proposal.

“The U.S. has been consistently offering in some form preemptive concessions that have been weakening the American and Ukrainian negotiating position," Bowman said. “I think there’s a real danger here that the administration’s approach is boiling down to sticks for Ukraine and carrots for Putin.”

Zelensky in his nightly video address on Monday made clear he remains doubtful that Putin is ready for peace.

"Now, almost a week later, it’s clear to everyone in the world — even to those who refused to acknowledge the truth for the past three years — that it is Putin who continues to drag out this war," Zelenskyy said.

In his dealings with Zelenskyy and Putin, Trump has frequently focused on who has the leverage. Putin has “the cards” and Zelenskyy does not, Trump has said repeatedly.

Trump, who has long shown admiration for Putin, has also made clear he'd like to see the U.S.-Russia relationship return to a more normal footing.

The president during his recent contentious meeting with Zelenskyy grumbled that “Putin went through a hell of a lot with me," a reference to the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in which he beat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump on Monday again underscored his view that Ukraine is not in a strong negotiating position. He said Russian forces have “surrounded” Ukrainian troops in Russia's Kursk region — amplifying an assertion made by Russian officials that's been disputed by Zelenskyy.

Ukraine’s army stunned Russia in August last year by attacking across the border and taking control of an estimated 1,300 square kilometers (500 square miles) of land. But Ukraine’s forces are now in retreat and it has all but lost a valuable bargaining chip, as momentum builds for a ceasefire with Russia.

Zelenskyy has acknowledged that the Ukrainians are on their back foot while disputing Russian claims that his troops are encircled in Kursk.

Trump suggested that he's taken unspecified action that has kept Russia from slaughtering Ukrainian troops in Kursk.

“They’re surrounded by Russian soldiers, and I believe if it wasn’t for me they wouldn’t be here any longer,” Trump said.

Leavitt is one of three Trump administration officials who face a lawsuit from The Associated Press on First- and Fifth-Amendment grounds. The AP says the three are punishing the news agency for editorial decisions they oppose. The White House says the AP is not following an executive order to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.