(Official editorial of the Advocate/Times-Picayune, Feb. 16) It is with deep sadness and a sense of disgust we see that after decades Louisiana will restart executions of its death row prisoners, and it will use the method of nitrogen hypoxia.
No matter what one’s underlying position on the death penalty is, the use of nitrogen gas as an execution method is unquestionably barbaric. Louisiana hasn’t imposed the death penalty since 2010, and its planned resumption of executions has been an on-again, off-again thing.
In a state with one of the world’s highest incarceration rates, our record on criminal justice is nothing to be proud of. But Gov. Jeff Landry has long pushed for executions as a supposed deterrent to crime, and last year he and the state Legislature enacted a law to allow nitrogen gas as one of several potential methods.
On Feb. 10, Landry approved a protocol for using nitrogen, and 9th District Judge Lowell Hazel quickly signed a warrant to execute murder convict Larry Roy on March 19 — only to withdraw it less than a day later on procedural grounds. The next day, though, two other district judges approved March 17 and March 18 executions for convicted murderers Christopher Sepulvado and Jessie Hoffman, respectively.
We recognize that the crimes of which they and others on death row have been convicted are reprehensible, and we understand and support the expectation that families of murder victims have for justice. Regardless, simple decency demands that none of these sentences be carried out until nitrogen is ruled out as the method of death. One need not even accept this newspaper’s position that the death penalty is immoral, as there is no recourse for an execution made in error, and impractical, with legal fees alone siphoning millions of dollars from the state treasury while the sentence actually provides little discernible deterrence to crime. One need only understand that this particular means of state-ordered killing, nitrogen gas, is downright heinous.
Not even veterinary scientists use nitrogen for euthanasia, as tests on animals show it causes “panic and distress … and seizure-like behavior” or “convulsions.” When used for the first time on a human last year, in Alabama, The Associated Press reported that convict Kenneth Eugene Smith “began to shake and writhe violently, in thrashing spasms and seizure-like movements. … The shaking went on for at least two minutes.” And so on. It took more than ten minutes for his visible breathing to stop….. [The full editorial is at this link.]
