Jessie Dean Hoffman Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 1, 1978 Louisiana, U.S. |
| Criminal status | Incarcerated on death row in Louisiana |
| Conviction(s) | First-degree murder |
| Criminal penalty | Death |
| Details | |
| Victims | Mary Elliot, 28 |
| Date | November 26, 1996 |
| Location(s) | Louisiana |
| Imprisoned at | Louisiana State Penitentiary |
Jessie Dean Hoffman Jr. (born September 1, 1978) is an American convicted murderer who was sentenced to death in Louisiana for the 1996 rape and murder of Mary Elliot. On November 26, 1996, Hoffman, who was 18 at the time, abducted 28-year-old advertising executive Mary Elliot in downtown New Orleans. After forcing Elliot to withdraw money from an ATM, the pair headed to a remote area in St. Tammany Parish, where Hoffman raped and murdered Elliot. Hoffman was subsequently found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death on September 11, 1998. He is currently awaiting to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia on March 18, 2025, in what is scheduled to be the state of Louisiana's first execution in over fifteen years.
On November 26, 1996, Jessie Hoffman Jr., who was two months past his 18th birthday, kidnapped, raped and murdered a woman in Louisiana. [1]
On that day itself, 28-year-old advertising executive Mary "Molly" Elliot had just left work and was on her way to retrieve her car at the Sheraton parking garage in downtown New Orleans, where she regularly parked her car for work. At the garage itself, Elliot encountered Hoffman, who was working as a valet at the garage, and the latter kidnapped the woman at gunpoint in her own car. [2] [3]
Hoffman forced Elliot to drive to a nearby ATM and withdraw some money. After receiving $200, Hoffman asked Elliot to drive them to a remote area in St. Tammany Parish. After arriving there, Hoffman raped Elliot at gunpoint and made her march to a dirt patch. At the patch itself, Elliot was forced to kneel on a makeshift dock near the Middle Pearl River and Hoffman shot her in the head in an execution-style manner. After killing Elliot, Hoffman left her naked body behind and he disposed of her belongings and the murder weapon. [2] [3]
The body of Elliot was not found until two days later, on November 28, 1996, Thanksgiving Day. A duck hunter discovered Elliot's corpse and reported the finding to the police. Elliot's husband, who reported his wife missing after she failed to meet him for dinner, identified her later that day. The police also received a report from a couple who found Elliot's clothes and belongings at a vacant lot. Among the objects were three ATM receipts, which were traced back to the same ATM where Elliot withdrew money for Hoffman. The police managed to identify and arrest Hoffman, based on the description of an African-American gunman captured together with Elliot on the photographs taken from the ATM. Hoffman initially denied his involvement in the murder, but he later admitted to the crime. [3]
After his arrest, Jessie Hoffman Jr. was charged with first-degree murder. On January 8, 1997, a St. Tammany Parish grand jury indicted Hoffman for the first-degree murder charge. Under Louisiana state law, an offense of first-degree murder carries the death penalty if found guilty. [3]
Subsequently, Hoffman stood trial before a 12-member St. Tammany Parish jury in 1998. It was adduced in trial that Hoffman had used the money he took from Elliot to go shopping with his girlfriend. Based on Hoffman's first statement, he said that after he kidnapped Elliot and had sex with her, which Hoffman claimed to be consensual and not rape, an unknown man armed with a gun walked off with Elliot into the secluded spot at St. Tammany Parish, before he returned alone. He recanted the statement in a later interrogation session, and said that the gun went off accidentally during a struggle with Elliot over the gun, and Elliot died from the shooting as a result. [3]
On June 25, 1998, the jury found Hoffman guilty of first-degree murder as charged. [4] In their plea for mitigation, Hoffman's lawyers contended that Hoffman suffered from chronic childhood abuse and neglect, leading to post-traumatic stress symptoms and brain damage. [2]
On June 27, 1998, two days after his conviction, the same jury returned with their verdict on sentence, recommending the death penalty for Hoffman. [4]
On September 11, 1998, Hoffman was formally sentenced to death by the trial court, in accordance to the jury's recommendation. [4]
On April 11, 2000, the Louisiana Supreme Court dismissed Jessie Hoffman's appeal. [3]
On May 12, 2014, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Hoffman's appeal. [5]
On January 20, 2015, Hoffman's final appeal and petition for a writ of certiorari was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court. [6]
On October 19, 2021, the Louisiana Supreme Court rejected another appeal from Hoffman. In the appeal, Hoffman alleged in his grounds of appeal that the validity of his conviction was breached by racial discrimination given that the jury that convicted him consisted of all 12 White jurors, and that his age of 18 made it manifestly excessive for him to receive a death sentence. The court rejected his claims of racial bias and also found that there was no tangible evidence of any consensus of against executing people under the age of 21, and dismissed his other points of appeal as well. [7]
On December 22, 2012, Hoffman filed a lawsuit against the state's lethal injection protocols, on the basis that its protocols were constituted as "cruel and unusual punishment" and that the state breached his constitutional rights. [8] While the lawsuit was ongoing, the state suspended the execution warrant of another death row inmate Christopher Sepulvado, who was originally scheduled to be executed on February 13, 2013; [9] [10] Sepulvado was allowed to join as a co-plaintiff in Hoffman's lawsuit thereafter. [11] [12]
Subsequently, a second lawsuit was filed by both Hoffman and Sepulvado against the state's lethal injection protocols in 2014, after the Louisiana prison authorities decided to switch to a new double-drug combination (midazolam and hydromorphone) in a second attempt to carry out Sepulvado's execution, which was re-scheduled to happen in February 2014. The execution was delayed while the lawsuit was pending in the courts, with the plaintiffs arguing that such a combination could give rise to the possibility of cruel and unusual punishment and violating their constitutional rights. [13] [14] At that time, Louisiana and several other states made amendments to their lethal injection protocols due to the European drugmakers' decision to stop importing their barbiturates and sedatives to the U.S for lethal injection executions in the death penalty states, which in turn led to the shortage of lethal injection drugs in these states. [15] [16]
On April 3, 2022, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick dismissed the lawsuit challenging Louisiana's lethal injection protocols, nearly a decade after it was first filed. The court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the protocols due to the state's inability to secure the necessary drugs for lethal injections. Among the plaintiffs was Hoffman, one of the ten or so condemned inmates involved in the case. [17] [18]
In 2023, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, who was nearing the end of his term, publicly announced for the first time that he opposed the death penalty and had been advocating for its abolition in the state. However, on May 24, 2023, the majority of lawmakers rejected a bill to end capital punishment in Louisiana. [19] [20] A month later, in June 2023, 56 out of 57 death row inmates, including Hoffman, filed petitions for clemency, hoping to benefit from Edwards' stance. These petitions were to be reviewed by the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole. [21] [22]
In July 2023, however, the Board rejected all 56 clemency petitions, determining that the inmates were ineligible as they had been filed too soon after recent judicial rulings on appeals (clemency petitions could only be submitted at least a year after the ruling of an inmate's final appeals). [23] Later, in October 2023, further clemency appeals from five death row inmates, including Antoinette Frank, were also denied by the Board. [24] [25]
In March 2024, Governor Jeff Landry, who succeeded Edwards, signed a bill into law that authorized the use of nitrogen hypoxia and the electric chair as alternative execution methods, in addition to lethal injection. This legislation followed the 2024 execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith in Alabama, the first person executed by nitrogen hypoxia in the U.S. and the world. [26] [27] Louisiana had observed a 14-year moratorium on executions since the state last carried out the execution of Gerald Bordelon (who raped and killed his stepdaughter) in 2010, [28] due to difficulties in obtaining lethal injection drugs and the refusal of drug companies to supply them for execution purposes. Family members of murder victims, whose killers were on death row, expressed support for the new bill allowing these alternative execution methods. [29] [30]
In early February 2025, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced that the state would resume executions using nitrogen hypoxia, a method recently legalized in Louisiana. This execution method had previously been used by Alabama to execute four prisoners between January 2024 and February 2025. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry also confirmed the decision to resume executions, emphasizing the state's commitment to delivering justice to crime victims after a 15-year hiatus. The first group of inmates targeted for execution included Jessie Hoffman, Christopher Sepulvado, and Larry Roy. [31] [32]
On February 12, 2025, Judge Alan Zaunbrecher of the 22nd Judicial District signed a death warrant for Jessie Hoffman, scheduling his execution for March 18, 2025. [33] Hoffman, was set to be executed just one day after Christopher Sepulvado, who was condemned for the 1992 torture and killing of his stepson, [34] [35] and both men were the first two inmates set to be put to death in Louisiana after the state's 15-year pause on executions. [36] Larry Roy's execution, originally set for March 19, 2025 (a day after Hoffman's), was later canceled after it was revealed that Roy had not exhausted all his appeals related to his 1994 conviction for the double murder of Freddie Richard Jr. and Rosetta Silas. The death warrant of Hoffman was the third issued that month for a Louisiana death row inmate (Roy and Sepulvado received their death warrants earlier than Hoffman during the same week). [37] [38]
A week after the scheduling of Hoffman's execution, his legal team prepared to challenge Louisiana's decision to use nitrogen hypoxia in federal court. [39] Hoffman's case, along with Sepulvado's, led to the revival of a lawsuit questioning the state's new execution protocols. U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick stated that the untested method of nitrogen hypoxia needed further examination, a decision Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill vowed to appeal. [40]
Merely days after the revival of the lawsuit, 81-year-old Christopher Sepulvado died of natural causes while on death row. Given Sepulvado's sudden death before execution, Hoffman is currently the only person with a confirmed execution date in Louisiana. If executed, Hoffman will become the first condemned person in Louisiana put to death since 2010, as well as the first in Louisiana to face a nitrogen gas execution. [41] [42]
On February 24, 2025, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halted Judge Dick's ruling, after Attorney General Liz Murrill appealed to overturn Judge Dick's ruling, which Murrill argued could potentially set a bad precedent for other challenges to the constitutionality of Louisiana laws in the district. This enabled Hoffman's execution date to remain in schedule. [43] [44]
Several family members of Hoffman appealed for mercy on his behalf. Hoffman's older brother, Marvin Fields, stated that the crime came as a shock to him, especially since Hoffman was recently graduated from Kennedy High School and began working as a valet at the parking lot where Elliot often parked her car. Fields stated that his brother was never a violent person and since young, their mother (who died in 2024) often would beat her four children (including Hoffman), and their family was not very well-off. Fields stated that he hoped for his brother to be given a second chance and stated that Hoffman was feeling sorry for his family for making them suffer from the impact of his crimes. Hoffman's son, who was born after his father was arrested for killing Elliot, stated that his father was still calm and his demeanour did not change in spite of his impending death. [45]
Hoffman's lawyer Cecelia Kappel lodged an appeal to challenge Louisiana's nitrogen gas execution protocols. In a media statement, Kappel criticised the state for deploying the method of nitrogen hypoxia to execute prisoners when it was banned from being used to conduct the euthanasia of animals, and stated that the untested method of nitrogen hypoxia should be reviewed by the courts. [46]