DEATH row killer Jessie Hoffman has been executed with nitrogen gas in a 19 minute ordeal that left him “twitching and jerking”.
The 46-year-old declined to make a final statement in the execution chamber and even declined a final meal.
Hoffman passed away at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where officials disclosed that nitrogen gas had been released for a total of 19 minutes, deeming the procedure a “perfect execution.”
Witnesses to the horror execution said Hoffman appeared to involuntarily shake or had “some convulsive activity”.
Under the Louisiana protocol, officials said Hoffman would be strapped to a gurney before a full-face respirator mask fitted tightly on him.
Pure nitrogen gas was then pumped into the mask, forcing him to breathe it in and depriving him of the oxygen needed to maintain bodily functions.
As part of the protocol, the gas was supposed to be delivered for no less than 15 minutes, or until five minutes after the prisoner’s heart rate ceased.
Two media witnesses to Tuesday’s execution said Hoffman was covered with a gray plush blanket from the neck down.
In the chamber with Hoffman was his spiritual advisor.
Prior to the execution and after the curtains closed to the viewing room, witnesses said they could hear Buddhist chanting.
The gas began to flow at 6:21pm, which is when Hoffman began twitching, media witnesses said.
His hands also clenched and he had a “slight head movement.”
Gina Swanson, an observer, noted that she paid careful attention to the blanket covering Hoffman’s chest and observed it moving up and down, suggesting he was still breathing.
She revealed that his last visible breath appeared to be at 6:37pm.
Shortly after, the curtains between the chamber and witness viewing room closed and, when they reopened, Hoffman was pronounced dead.
Seth Smith, chief of operations at the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, witnessed the execution and also spoke of Hoffman’s random movements.
Smith, who has a medical background, said he perceived the convulsions to be an “involuntary response to dying” and that Hoffman appeared to be unconscious at the time.
It was the fifth time nitrogen gas was used in the US after four executions by the same method all in Alabama.
Three other executions, by lethal injection, are scheduled this week in Arizona on Wednesday and in Florida and Oklahoma on Thursday.
Hoffman was convicted of the 1996 rape and murder of Mary Molly Elliott, a 28-year-old advertising executive who was killed in New Orleans.
At the time of the crime, Hoffman was 18 and has since spent much of his adult life at the penitentiary in rural southeast Louisiana, where he was executed Tuesday evening.
Following desperate court battles earlier this month, attorneys for Hoffman turned to the Supreme Court in last-ditch hopes of halting the execution.
Just last year, the court declined to intervene in the nations first nitrogen hypoxia execution that took place in Alabama.
Hoffman’s lawyers had unsuccessfully argued that the nitrogen gas procedure which deprives a person of oxygen violates the Eighth Amendments prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
And in a last-ditch appeal, they also argued the method would infringe on Hoffman’s freedom to practice religion – his Buddhist breathing and meditation – in the moments leading up to his death.
Louisiana officials consistently maintained that method is painless.
They also said it was past time for the state to deliver justice as promised to victims families after a decade and a half hiatus one brought on partly by an inability to secure lethal injection drugs.
Hours earlier at a hearing on Tuesday, a 19th Judicial District Court Judge Richard Chip Moore also declined to stop the execution.
He agreed with the state’s lawyers who had argued the man’s religion-based arguments fell under the jurisdiction of a federal judge who had already ruled on them, according to local news outlets.
