It's Anniversary Time....
Jessie Dean Hoffman, Jr.
I think every honorable anniversary should be an exciting, happy and memorable event - something to celebrate and spread the joy to others. I will be very soon, for example, celebrating my own personal anniversary - it’s my FreedomVersary. It will be my third full year of freedom since I was released from Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana. I served 47 years there so freedom is still fairly new and exciting for me, and I try to relish every single day. I’m also about to turn 73 so probably won’t see a fourth anniversary - maybe, but not counting it yet.
What I do is write about a topic that troubles me greatly and that people ignore or turn away from all too often simply because it is truly uncomfortable to them, and difficult to talk about.
Those (like me) who oppose it can’t quit talking about it, and those who support it usually aren’t willing to talk about it, or are so toxic in their argument that it’s almost impossible to build a bridge that we can both walk across together.
So, what is that topic - where you cannot find a common meeting ground?
The death penalty. It is, particularly in the Southern states:
Arbitrary
Racialized
Political
Uneven
Declining
And, that’s the part that really gets me. While opposition to the death penalty is steadily rising and support declining, there are a few states where politically there is a push going on:
Sadly, I have to report that Louisiana has, in the past two years, turned a corner on this journey. Jeff Landry, Louisiana’s governor, reinstituted an energized push toward carrying out the sentences of men who have lived many, many years on death row while rebuilding their lives and becoming the people they were truly meant to be. Landry convinced a handful of MAGA legislators that his way was the only way to solve the crime crisis. Not surprisingly, the crime rate throughout Louisiana has consistently gone down for years, with the exception of the nationwide spike during the COVID pandemic era, which was unpredictable.
So, Landry lied. Again.
Louisiana’s violent crime rate today is still well below the levels recorded in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While crime spiked nationally during the pandemic years of 2020–2021, the long-term trend over the past quarter-century is downward.
I do my research - don’t play with me! Since Landry lied, the incarceration rate - while everything else declined - has steadily increased. Since he took office, he has removed almost EVERY single incentive prisoners had, eliminated parole eligibility, reduced good behaviour time that can be earned, and most importantly - created new methods of execution.
Now, let’s talk about the anniversary thing. On March 18, 2026, one year will have passed since the execution by nitrogen hypoxia suffocation by Governor Jeff Landry of one of my friends, Jessie Dean Hoffman, Jr..
Jessie Dean Hoffman Jr. was born in Louisiana on September 1, 1978. Hoffman grew up in a family of five children; one of Hoffman’s brothers, Charles Fields, was shot and killed at the age of 25 in New Orleans on May 31, 1998. Hoffman was unmarried, but he had a girlfriend who gave birth to their son sometime after Hoffman was arrested for a 1996 murder case.
According to one of Hoffman’s brothers, Marvin Fields, the family was not well-off and at one point, they moved to Florida and settled into a housing development area. At a young age, Hoffman and his siblings were often abused by their mother, who would regularly beat them with strip cuts of a thick belt and also placed their hands on a hot stove until their fingers grew blisters as a punishment for stealing. Despite his troubles at home, Hoffman did well in school as a football player who played quarterback for the school team, and even attained straight A’s through the 11th grade, but his grades fell after he began a relationship with his then-girlfriend.
By 1996, Hoffman completed his high school education at Kennedy High School and graduated. He also worked in multiple jobs during high school, including a restaurant worker and inn employee. After his high school graduation, Hoffman went on to work as a carpark valet in New Orleans in November 1996, but less than three weeks after he began his valet job, Hoffman was accused of committing the rape and murder that landed him on death row.
One had to get to know Jessie to appreciate his gregarious sense of humor and his overwhelming love of life in general and his love for his fellow man (in the sense of humanity).
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. 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, and who was a “volunteer” for his own execution) in 2010, due to difficulties in obtaining lethal injection drugs and the refusal of drug companies to supply them for execution purposes.
Landry and his disciples (all MAGA adherents), want you to see Jessie as this guy:
I prefer to see him as this guy:
Jessie faced his hate-filled death with class, with dignity, and with love. He spent the last day of his life in a place I know very well. The copy machine in the background? I used that copier every single day for years. The door barely visible in the far-right upper background of the photo? That was just steps away from my office directly to the left, where I worked as the Camp F clerk. That door is also the door into the execution chamber, where the State of Louisiana and Attorney General Liz Murrill murdered Jessie only hours later.
On March 18, 2025, hours before Hoffman was executed, the sister-in-law of Molly Elliott (Hoffman’s victim) asked the governor to spare the life of Hoffman and commute his death sentence to life without parole, saying that the death of Hoffman would not provide closure to her.
They did not listen.
Even the victim’s own family asked for mercy.
The state refused - choosing execution and death over compassion, and power over healing.
Jeff Landry and Liz Murrill had their way.
This month is the anniversary of Jessie Dean Hoffman, Jr.’s execution, the first-ever nitrogen hypoxia execution in Louisiana’s history, It is the ascendancy into hell of Jeff Landry and Liz Murrill. It is an anniversary of death and we do not celebrate that. RIP, Jessie Dean Hoffman, Jr..
I do this work on my own, without sponsors, without anyone but individual readers who value the work of abolishing the death penalty. Please, help me out!
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Help us to abolish the death penalty altogether! Just click below:
And, this month, introducing a special group who will soon be opening up a non-profit geared up towards helping incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated people
At any rate, THANK YOU for being here! I hope you’ll consider helping any of the causes I’ve listed!
Bill, as always, marvelous work. And, by the way, 73 is not a death knell. Whatever time you, and I, have left on this earth will be spent waging a battle--not just for change but to keep alive the defiance that allowed us to survive decades refusing to accept, and waging war against when necessary, a corrupt, violent penal system.