Four Executions in Three Days Spotlight Constitutional Concerns About Death Penalty

In a three-day span from March 18 to March 20, four men were exe­cut­ed in four dif­fer­ent states. Two of the men put to death, in Louisiana and Arizona, were the first exe­cut­ed in their state in years. While the close tim­ing of the exe­cu­tions result­ed from inde­pen­dent state-lev­el deci­sions and indi­vid­u­al­ized legal devel­op­ments rather than any coor­di­nat­ed nation­al effort, all four exe­cu­tions raised seri­ous constitutional concerns.

March 18: Jessie Hoffman (LA)

On March 18, Louisiana exe­cut­ed Jessie Hoffman, mark­ing the state’s first exe­cu­tion in 15 years and the first exe­cu­tion by nitro­gen gas out­side Alabama, where the method was used for the first time last year. Mr. Hoffman’s exe­cu­tion went for­ward despite con­cerns that the nitro­gen gas method vio­lat­ed his reli­gious free­dom and would cause him ​“pain and ter­ror” in vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment. Mr. Hoffman was a prac­tic­ing Buddhist for over two decades, his attor­neys wrote in a Supreme Court fil­ing, and ​“in Buddhist tra­di­tion, med­i­ta­tive breath­ing at the time of death car­ries pro­found spir­i­tu­al sig­nif­i­cance, found­ed in the core belief that med­i­ta­tion and unfet­tered breath at the time of tran­si­tion from life to death deter­mines the qual­i­ty of rebirth.” By con­trast, ​“nitro­gen gassing would pre­vent Mr. Hoffman from engag­ing in con­scious med­i­ta­tion by alter­ing the breath­ing process and cre­at­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal distress…feelings of pan­ic and air hunger.” 

Two courts issued stays of exe­cu­tion — one based on Mr. Hoffman’s reli­gious free­dom claim, one based on his cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment Eighth Amendment claim — but both stays were ulti­mate­ly lift­ed. On Tuesday evening, the Supreme Court denied Mr. Hoffman’s final appli­ca­tion for a stay over the dis­sent­ing votes of four jus­tices. (The Court requires only four votes to hear a case, but five to grant a stay.) Justice Neil Gorsuch, in his first dis­sent from denial of a stay of exe­cu­tion since he joined the Court in 2017, wrote that he would have grant­ed the stay and remand­ed for the Fifth Circuit to prop­er­ly deter­mine whether Mr. Hoffman’s exe­cu­tion by nitro­gen gas vio­lat­ed his rights under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). Justice Gorsuch wrote that a low­er court had improp­er­ly imposed its own judg­ment ​“about the kind of breath­ing Mr. Hoffman’s faith requires…contraven[ing] the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple that courts have ​‘no license to declare…whether an adher­ent has ​“cor­rect­ly per­ceived” the com­mands of his religion.’”

The local Jewish com­mu­ni­ty protest­ed Mr. Hoffman’s exe­cu­tion, draw­ing par­al­lels to the Nazis’ use of poi­son gas to mur­der near­ly half of the six mil­lion Jews killed in the Holocaust. ​“To use a method that was a form of state-sanc­tioned mur­der and geno­cide of lit­er­al­ly mil­lions of people…to re-imple­ment that as a form of jus­tice in 21^st-cen­tu­ry Louisiana seems to us equal­ly abhor­rent, because of the way that method of exe­cu­tion is so hor­ri­bly and intrin­si­cal­ly linked to the dec­i­ma­tion of our peo­ple,” said Naomi Yavneh Klos, a mem­ber of the Jews Against Gassing Coalition and pro­fes­sor at Loyola University New Orleans. 

Mr. Hoffman’s age at the time of his offense — just 18 years old — also raised con­cerns. Had he been three months younger, he would not have been eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty, based on the Supreme Court’s recog­ni­tion that juve­niles are less cul­pa­ble for cap­i­tal crimes because their brains have not ful­ly devel­oped. Scientists have con­sis­tent­ly found that ​“emerg­ing adults” under age 21, like Mr. Hoffman, exhib­it many of the same cog­ni­tive deficits and imma­ture behav­iors as juve­niles. He was sen­tenced to death for the rob­bery, rape, and mur­der of a 28-year-old woman whom he abduct­ed from the park­ing garage where he worked. 

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who worked to imple­ment the new nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, took office in January 2024 after run­ning on a cam­paign to resume exe­cu­tions. As the state’s Attorney General, he had tak­en unprece­dent­ed legal efforts to block out­go­ing Gov. John Bel Edwards from com­mut­ing any death sen­tences in 2023. (For more infor­ma­tion on how elect­ed offi­cials politi­cize cap­i­tal cas­es, despite decreas­ing vot­er sup­port for the death penal­ty, read DPI’s Lethal Election report.)

March 19: Aaron Gunches (AZ)

On March 19, Aaron Gunches was put to death in Arizona after years of seek­ing his own exe­cu­tion, becom­ing the 167^th ​“vol­un­teer” in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty. A DPI study found that death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers seek their own exe­cu­tion at ten times the sui­cide rate of the gen­er­al pub­lic, and 85% of vol­un­teers are white men like Mr. Gunches. And like Mr. Gunches, who had a his­to­ry of heavy drug use and sui­ci­dal behav­ior, 87% of vol­un­teers suf­fer from men­tal ill­ness, addic­tion, or both. Mr. Gunches sought to rep­re­sent him­self, waive appeals, and eschew his legal rights at vir­tu­al­ly every stage of pro­ceed­ings, prompt­ing a judge on one occa­sion to ask if he was try­ing to ​“com­mit sui­cide by jury.” Because Mr. Gunches pre­sent­ed noth­ing in his own defense, no jury ever heard mit­i­ga­tion evi­dence about his life. 

His exe­cu­tion came after sev­er­al years of polit­i­cal bat­tles over Arizona’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. Corrections offi­cers strug­gled to set IV lines in all three Arizona exe­cu­tions in 2022, prompt­ing Gov. Katie Hobbs to impose a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions and order an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion when she took office in 2023. Last year, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell sought to force the state to resume exe­cu­tions, but her legal efforts became moot when Gov. Hobbs abrupt­ly fired the retired mag­is­trate judge con­duct­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion in November 2024 and sub­se­quent­ly lift­ed the mora­to­ri­um. The judge, David Duncan, has since shared dis­turb­ing details from his inves­ti­ga­tion, includ­ing the fact that lethal injec­tion team mem­bers researched drug dosages on Wikipedia the night before an exe­cu­tion. Judge Duncan con­tends that he was dis­missed because he asked the state to pro­vide tax records for secret $20,000 cash pay­ments to prison offi­cials involved in the botched exe­cu­tions. But the Arizona Supreme Court grant­ed Mr. Gunches’ request for his own exe­cu­tion date to be set, and he died by lethal injec­tion at 10:33 a.m.

March 20: Wendell Grissom (OK) 

Wendell Grissom died by lethal injec­tion just after 10:00 a.m. in Oklahoma. He was sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of a young woman dur­ing a home inva­sion rob­bery. He also shot the home­own­er, Dreu Kopf, who man­aged to escape; the mur­der occurred in front of Ms. Kopf’s two young daugh­ters, who also sur­vived. Mr. Grissom apol­o­gized to Ms. Kopf, her daugh­ters, and vic­tim fam­i­ly mem­bers in his last words. ​“He can­not change the past, but he is now and always has been deeply ashamed and remorse­ful,” said his attor­ney Kristi Christopher. 

Mr. Grissom’s attor­neys also high­light­ed his his­to­ry of brain dam­age, which his jury nev­er heard. Mr. Grissom expe­ri­enced pro­longed oxy­gen depri­va­tion dur­ing birth and exhib­it­ed devel­op­men­tal delays as a young child, to the point that his par­ents strug­gled to under­stand him. He then suf­fered mul­ti­ple head injuries in motor­cy­cle acci­dents between ages 8 and 16 that left him with severe headaches, behav­ioral changes, mood prob­lems, and sub­stance addic­tion. In a February 2025 clemen­cy hear­ing, his attor­neys said that sev­er­al jurors, includ­ing the jury fore­man, had con­firmed that they would have like­ly vot­ed for a life sen­tence if they had known about his brain damage.

March 20: Edward James (FL)

Edward James died by lethal injec­tion at 8:15 p.m. in Florida, after his exe­cu­tion was delayed two hours. Though the state gave no expla­na­tion for the delay, news out­lets con­firmed that Gov. Ron DeSantis had trav­eled to the White House for President Trump’s 4 p.m. sign­ing of an exec­u­tive order to dis­man­tle the Department of Education. ​“The death penal­ty should nev­er be wield­ed as a polit­i­cal weapon,” Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) said in a state­ment fol­low­ing the exe­cu­tion. ​“While peo­ple may dis­agree on whether or not the death penal­ty is an appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment, there should be no dis­pute that the process, espe­cial­ly when car­ry­ing out an exe­cu­tion, should be met with solem­ni­ty and dig­ni­ty, and not whim­si­cal­ly moved around to accom­mo­date polit­i­cal sched­ules and photo ops.” 

Mr. James was sen­tenced to death in 1995 for mur­der­ing a woman and her 8‑year-old grand­daugh­ter, and sex­u­al­ly assault­ing the grand­daugh­ter, while pro­found­ly intox­i­cat­ed on alco­hol and LSD. One of his jurors vot­ed for a life sen­tence, which would have spared Mr. James’ life in every state but Alabama and Florida.¹ In 2016 the Florida Supreme Court held that non-unan­i­mous death sen­tences were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, giv­ing near­ly 150 peo­ple on Florida’s death row an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a new sen­tenc­ing tri­al — 81% of whom have since been resen­tenced to life accord­ing to DPI’s research. But even though Mr. James’ sen­tence was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under that rul­ing, he did not receive a resen­tenc­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty because his con­vic­tion became final in 1997, and the Florida Supreme Court lim­it­ed its relief to peo­ple whose con­vic­tions became final in 2002 or lat­er.²

Mr. James’ attor­neys argued that Mr. James was no longer com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed after a heart attack in January 2023 left him deprived of oxy­gen for an extend­ed peri­od, com­pound­ing brain dam­age from years of sub­stance abuse and pri­or seri­ous head injuries. They alleged that a CT scan fol­low­ing the heart attack, which revealed ​“long­stand­ing brain dete­ri­o­ra­tion,” was not dis­closed to the defense until last month. Mr. James also served in the Army; the Supreme Court has rec­og­nized that ​“Our Nation has a long tra­di­tion of accord­ing lenien­cy to vet­er­ans in recog­ni­tion of their ser­vice,” but DPI has found that mil­i­tary vet­er­ans appear to be over­rep­re­sent­ed on death row and that courts uneven­ly weigh mil­i­tary ser­vice as a mitigating factor.