Louisiana will resume executions after a 15 -year parenthesis, advancing the past spring plans to carry out death sentences Use of nitrogen hypoxia.
Louisiana Jeff Landry’s governor’s office released A summary of the State’s updated execution protocol on Monday along with a promise to move forward with the death penalty for the first time since 2010. There are currently 63 people in the death corridor in Louisiana, according To the Death Penalty Information Center, but legal challenges, political opposition and the problems to obtain lethal injects have prevented the State from executing people for more than a decade.
“The time for broken promises is over; we will carry out these prayers and justice will be dispensed,” Landry said in a statement. “I hope that we end these cases and the courts move quickly to bring justice to the victims of the crime they have expected too much.”
Technically, there are three execution methods approved in Louisiana. Lethal injection is the predetermined method, and electrocution and nitrogen hypoxia are alternatives. State legislators last year authorized nitrogen hypoxia, An experimental procedure He tried only four times before in the registered history of the nation, as a means to execute death prisoners. His decision came shortly after Alabama introduced the method to the public in January 2024, during the controversial and disputed execution of Kenny Smithwhose death was described by several witnesses, including reporters, as potentially tortuous.
Little is understood about nitrogen hypoxia, where an inmate is given in nitrogen gas administered through a facial mask, and Alabama was the only state of the United States before this week that had released a protocol for this type Execution. In addition to Alabama and, now, Louisiana, nitrogen gas executions have also been approved by legislatures in Mississippi and Oklahoma, while Ohio and Nebraska positioned themselves to do the same after Smith was killed.
The Summary of the Louisian Nitrogen Gas Protocol is without details, but it seems, superficially, similar to what is known about the Alabama approach.
“The execution by nitrogen hypoxia is achieved by placing a mask on the inmate’s face and replacing oxygen with nitrogen gas,” reads partly. “At the designated time, pure nitrogen gas will be administered to the inmate through the mask for a sufficient period of time necessary to cause the death of the inmate. According to the protocol, the coroner will be asked to confirm death.”
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