UPDATE (March 18, 2025 8:51 p.m. E.T.): The state of Louisiana executed Jessie Hoffman Tuesday evening with nitrogen gas. The Associated Press reports that, according to Louisiana authorities, he was officially pronounced dead at 7:50 p.m. E.T.
The day before Thanksgiving 1996, 18-year-old Jessie Hoffman, a valet at the New Orleans parking garage where Mary “Molly” Elliott parked for work, kidnapped the recently married 28-year-old ad executive, made her withdraw money from an ATM, raped her, shot her and left her to die at a boat launch in neighboring St. Tammany Parish.
There was never any doubt that Hoffman did everything the state says he did.
Tuesday, in retaliation for the indisputable terror and violence Hoffman inflicted upon Elliott more than 28 years ago, Louisiana plans to suffocate him to death. If the execution by nitrogen gas proceeds according to the state’s schedule, Hoffman, now 46, will be the first Louisiana Death Row inmate executed in 15 years.
And Gov. Jeff Landry and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, both Republicans, will get the taste of blood they seem to crave. Landry was critical of his predecessor’s opposition to the death penalty, and Murrill seemed annoyed that an 81-year-old Death Row inmate died last month before the state could kill him.
Over 13 consecutive days in June 1998, I covered Hoffman’s trial for The Times-Picayune. Take it from someone who was there: There was never any doubt that Hoffman did everything the state says he did.
In one of the increasingly preposterous stories he told to explain his 2½-hour absence from the parking garage, he told police he had been kidnapped by men who made him have sex with a woman they had in their car. The jury deliberated 36 minutes before finding Hoffman guilty.
The only open questions were whether Hoffman accidentally shot Elliott — as the defense argued — and whether his crime spree had been rash or premeditated. Hoffman would have been guilty regardless, but to persuade 12 people to put a man to death, you can’t allow them to believe the defendant lost control and committed a series of escalating crimes. You try to convince them, as a prosecutor did, that Hoffman had “ice water in his veins.”
But what’s colder than keeping a man in a cage for almost 30 years and then killing him?
I never bought the state’s theory that Hoffman put a lot of thought into his attack on Elliott. But even if he did, the state has put exponentially more aforethought into killing him.
Louisiana officials traveled to Alabama, the first state to use nitrogen gas as an execution method, and then built a facility at the Louisiana State Penitentiary to carry out that method of killing. Hoffman’s legal team, which produced an expert who says Hoffman will feel like he’s drowning if he’s forced to breathe pure nitrogen, has argued that the method is painful and cruel. Louisiana doesn’t even allow dogs and cats to be euthanized in such a manner, they point out. But Louisiana counters that “breathing in the mask is ‘very comfortabl[e]’” and that “the mask is very similar, if not identical, to the one used in Alabama’s system.”
One of Hoffman’s advocates told me during a phone interview that the 46-year-old Hoffman isn’t the same person the 18-year-old was. I’m sure that’s true, but even if it weren’t, and even if dying of nitrogen hypoxia were painless, it’s still wrong for the state to kill him.
Hoffman’s legal team, which produced an expert who says Hoffman will feel like he’s drowning, has argued that the method is painful and cruel.
Andy Elliott, who’d been married to Molly for a little more than a year before Hoffman violated and murdered her, said in a statement to USA Today that he’s “become indifferent to the death penalty vs. life in prison without possibility of parole” and knows Hoffman’s being killed “will not provide closure” but that he wants the legal process to end. “My sincere hope is either to get the execution done or commute his sentence to life in prison without parole, one or the other, as soon as possible,” he told USA Today.
Kate Murphy, a sister-in-law of the murder victim, in a Monday letter requesting a pardon hearing for Hoffman, wrote, “Executing Jessie Hoffman is not justice in my name, it is the opposite.”
Obviously there are survivors who are eager for the state to avenge their murdered loved ones, but even in those cases in which a victim’s family is clamoring for it, the state calmly and coolly killing a person is an offense. It’s barbaric.
The one image from Hoffman’s trial that I’ll never shake is of his grandmother Rosa Lee Hoffman, who begged jurors not to condemn him to death. Hoffman, as other relatives had testified, was the only person gentle enough to administer his grandmother’s insulin shots, and Rosa Lee Hoffman testified that he was her favorite.
“He was the best one,” she said. “I raised him. He just ain’t the kind. He got too much good in him to do something like that.” Then she put her forehead on the handle of her walking cane and wept.
But Hoffman did “do something like that.” And he eventually came to admit it. His attorney Cecelia Kappel told USA TODAY, “He takes full responsibility for this very tragic, awful crime.” She said, “He is so sorry to the family of Molly Elliott and he wishes to have opportunity before he dies to have a face-to-face conversation where he can apologize in person.”
In June 1998, as Hoffman’s defense team was trying to get a panel seated with at least one person who wouldn’t vote for death, one of his attorneys — who acknowledged that his client had committed “a terrible crime” — said, “I’m doing the very best I can to see to it that Jessie Hoffman gets a fair trial.” He also said, “If they want to take the only thing he’s got, then they’ve got to do it right. Will you promise me that if they do it, you’ll make them do it right?”
It’s almost 27 years later. Let’s admit: When it comes to executing a human being, the state can’t do it right.
