After Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to expand methods for state executions from lethal injection to include nitrogen gas and electrocution, a lawmaker is trying to remove gas from that list.
- staff FILE PHOTO
Sen. Katrina R. Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, speaks during Governor Jeff Landry’s special session focusing on crime, Wednesday, February 28, 2024, at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, La.
- STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
Anti-death penalty activists place signs along the road heading to Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., ahead of the scheduled execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. The state plans to put Smith to death with nitrogen gas, the first time the new method has been used in the United States. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)
- Kim Chandler
Nicknamed “Gruesome Gertie” by inmates on Death Row, the electric chair formerly used for executions at the Angola State Penitentiary is seen, Thursday, February 29, 2024, at the Angola State Penitentiary Museum in Angola, La.
- STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
The entrance to death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola seen in an Advocate | Times-Picayune file photo. After Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to expand methods for state executions from lethal injection to include nitrogen gas and electrocution, a lawmaker is trying to remove gas from that list.
- ADVOCATE FILE PHOTO
Sen. Katrina R. Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, speaks during Governor Jeff Landry’s special session focusing on crime, Wednesday, February 28, 2024, at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, La.
- STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
Anti-death penalty activists place signs along the road heading to Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., ahead of the scheduled execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. The state plans to put Smith to death with nitrogen gas, the first time the new method has been used in the United States. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)
- Kim Chandler
Nicknamed “Gruesome Gertie” by inmates on Death Row, the electric chair formerly used for executions at the Angola State Penitentiary is seen, Thursday, February 29, 2024, at the Angola State Penitentiary Museum in Angola, La.
- STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
After Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to expand methods for state executions from lethal injection to include nitrogen gas and electrocution, a lawmaker is trying to remove gas from that list.
- staff FILE PHOTO
The entrance to death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola seen in an Advocate | Times-Picayune file photo. After Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to expand methods for state executions from lethal injection to include nitrogen gas and electrocution, a lawmaker is trying to remove gas from that list.
- ADVOCATE FILE PHOTO
Sen. Katrina R. Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, speaks during Governor Jeff Landry’s special session focusing on crime, Wednesday, February 28, 2024, at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, La.
- STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
Anti-death penalty activists place signs along the road heading to Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., ahead of the scheduled execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. The state plans to put Smith to death with nitrogen gas, the first time the new method has been used in the United States. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)
- Kim Chandler
Nicknamed “Gruesome Gertie” by inmates on Death Row, the electric chair formerly used for executions at the Angola State Penitentiary is seen, Thursday, February 29, 2024, at the Angola State Penitentiary Museum in Angola, La.
- STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
The bill would undo a recent law backed by Gov. Jeff Landry that adds nitrogen gas to the tools state uses to execute death row prisoners.
2 min to read
James Finn
After Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to expand methods for state executions from lethal injection to include nitrogen gas and electrocution, a lawmaker is trying to remove gas from that list.
- staff FILE PHOTO
Anti-death penalty activists place signs along the road heading to Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., ahead of the scheduled execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. The state plans to put Smith to death with nitrogen gas, the first time the new method has been used in the United States. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)
- Kim Chandler
Nicknamed “Gruesome Gertie” by inmates on Death Row, the electric chair formerly used for executions at the Angola State Penitentiary is seen, Thursday, February 29, 2024, at the Angola State Penitentiary Museum in Angola, La.
- STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
The entrance to death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola seen in an Advocate | Times-Picayune file photo. After Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to expand methods for state executions from lethal injection to include nitrogen gas and electrocution, a lawmaker is trying to remove gas from that list.
- ADVOCATE FILE PHOTO
Sen. Katrina R. Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, speaks during Governor Jeff Landry’s special session focusing on crime, Wednesday, February 28, 2024, at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, La.
- STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
Anti-death penalty activists place signs along the road heading to Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., ahead of the scheduled execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. The state plans to put Smith to death with nitrogen gas, the first time the new method has been used in the United States. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)
- Kim Chandler
Nicknamed “Gruesome Gertie” by inmates on Death Row, the electric chair formerly used for executions at the Angola State Penitentiary is seen, Thursday, February 29, 2024, at the Angola State Penitentiary Museum in Angola, La.
- STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
After Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to expand methods for state executions from lethal injection to include nitrogen gas and electrocution, a lawmaker is trying to remove gas from that list.
- staff FILE PHOTO
The entrance to death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola seen in an Advocate | Times-Picayune file photo. After Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to expand methods for state executions from lethal injection to include nitrogen gas and electrocution, a lawmaker is trying to remove gas from that list.
- ADVOCATE FILE PHOTO
Sen. Katrina R. Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, speaks during Governor Jeff Landry’s special session focusing on crime, Wednesday, February 28, 2024, at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, La.
- STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
Anti-death penalty activists place signs along the road heading to Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., ahead of the scheduled execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. The state plans to put Smith to death with nitrogen gas, the first time the new method has been used in the United States. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)
- Kim Chandler
Nicknamed “Gruesome Gertie” by inmates on Death Row, the electric chair formerly used for executions at the Angola State Penitentiary is seen, Thursday, February 29, 2024, at the Angola State Penitentiary Museum in Angola, La.
- STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
A Louisiana Senate Committee voted Tuesday to strike nitrogen gas suffocation from the state's list of approved execution methods, reversing one of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry's tough-on-crime priorities.
The Senate Judiciary B Committee moved with no objections to advance a bill by Sen. Katrina Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, that would remove gas from the list of methods the state can used to execute death row prisoners. The measure is Senate Bill 430.
A bill pushed by Landryearlier this year had added nitrogen hypoxia and electrocution to the state's existing lethal injection process, enflaming a debate over capital punishment that drew particular outcry from Jewish activists, who argued that the method evokes the Nazi regime's use of gas, and others opposed to the largely untested method of suffocating prisoners to death with nitrogen.
"We recognize, of course, that the gassing of innocent victims in the Holocaust is quite different from executing a convicted criminal," said Naomi Yavneh-Klos, a Loyola University professor and member of the Jews Against Gassing Coalition, whose members have varied views on capital punishment but agree that gas should not be used for that purpose.
"But for Jewish people, and really anyone with knowledge of the Holocaust," she continued, "the historical association with this execution method is chilling and undeniable, eliciting a visceral response that evokes not justice, your goal, but genocide."
Less than an hour after the hearing ended, a small press conference by that group on the Capitol steps was disrupted by a pro-death penalty protestor who repeatedly shouted over the activists as they spoke about the trauma of the Holocaust.
Nitrogen gas has been used only once to carry out an execution in the United States. Alabama Department of Corrections officials in January executed Kenneth Eugene Smith for a 1988 murder-for-hire by strapping a mask to his face and pumping nitrogen into his lungs.
Smith "writhed violently" on the death chamber gurney for several minutes before "gasping and struggling for air," said Lee Hedgepeth, an Alabama journalist who witnessed the execution.
At Tuesday's hearing, Rapides Parish District Attorney Phillip Terrell spoke briefly against the bill along with Sally Ann Richard, whose husband was stabbed to death in 1993 in their Cheneyville home.
"I think he deserves death row," Richard said of her husband's killer, Larry Roy, who was sentenced to death for the slaying.
Jackson-Andrews, the bill's sponsor, took care to tell Richard after her testimony that the bill would not outlaw the death penalty or affect the other two execution methods currently allowed under state law.
Republicans in Louisiana's GOP-dominated Legislature mostly fell in line with Landry's sweeping push to toughen the state's criminal codes through longer sentences and easier methods to carry out executions. Landry advanced those goals through a whirlwind special session earlier this spring that eliminated parole for adults convicted of crimes after Aug. 1 and pared back early release for good behavior.
But at Tuesday's hearing, none of the four Republicans on the Judiciary B Committee objected to the bill's passage. The committee advanced it to the full Senate after the brief testimony. It must pass the House and be signed by Landry, or overcome a veto by two-thirds votes in both the House and Senate, to become law.
Unlike elsewhere, Louisiana’s new death penalty law would leave the choice among the state's three existing execution methods to the state corrections secretary. Secretary Jimmy LeBlanc has not publicly said which method he would favor.
Louisiana last put someone to death 14 years ago when Gerald Bordelon voluntarily chose to be executed by lethal injection for the murder of his 12-year-old stepdaughter.
James Finn covers state politics in Baton Rouge for The Advocate | The Times-Picayune. Email him atjfinn@theadvocate.comor follow him on Twitter@rjamesfinn.
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