Louisiana to Use Never-Before-Seen Execution Method After 15-Year Pause

Louisiana is set to resume death penalty punishments this month, after a 15 year pause. When the state does resume executions, it's likely that they will use a method of capital punishment never used in the state before.

Since the first day that Louisiana was admitted to The Union in 1812, the state has leveled capital punishment sentencing. Records going all the way back to July of 1812 show the state carried out hanging punishments. That wasn't that odd at the time either, many states had capital punishments carried out regularly. Louisiana continued hangings in the 1940s, when the introduction of the electric chair changed the state's preferred method of execution.

Louisiana continued electrocutions into the 1960s; but the State's whole capital punishment program was shelved when the Supreme Court abolished death penalty convictions in 1972. This caused state's to rewrite their death penalty laws, which were upheld when they returned to the Supreme Court in 1976. After 1976, electrocution deaths continued into the early 1990s in Louisiana.

In 1993, Louisiana saw their first execution by lethal injection, when Robert Wayne Sawyer was put to death. Lethal injection remained the state's method of capital punishment until 2010...the last time Louisiana put someone to death.

Since 2010, it has become increasingly difficult for states to obtain the drugs to perform lethal injections. But now, an older method of capital punishment is returning.

The state of Alabama executed Kenneth Eugene Smith in January of 2024 by nitrogen hypoxia, a gas execution. This method uses nitrogen gas to put the inmate to death, and is what Louisiana is now planning to use moving forward.

Gas execution has never been used by the state of Louisiana over the 175+ years that the state has been putting people to death. Hanging, lethal injection, electrocution, and even firing squad deaths during the Civil War, but never gas.

Initially, DeSoto Parish man Christopher Sepulvado was scheduled to be the first person in Louisiana to be put to death by gas. But he died in prison just weeks before his execution was scheduled. Which means Jessie Hoffman is now set to be the first executed in Louisiana by gas on March 18th, 2025.

Hoffman previously created a decade-long delay in capital punishment in Louisiana, when he filed legal challenges to lethal injections in 2012. That case wasn't dismissed until 2022.