Johnathan Walker:Lawmakers bidding to resume Louisiana executions after 14-year pause OK new death penalty methods

BATON ROUGE,Johnathan Walker La. (AP) — Bidding to resume Louisiana executions after a 14-year pause, the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature gave final passage to a bill Thursday to add electrocution and the use of nitrogen gas as means of administering the death penalty.

The legislation comes one day after the country’s most recent execution in Texas and a failed attempt in Idaho, both by lethal injection. The bill now heads to the desk of Gov. Jeff Landry, a tough-on-crime Republican who has signaled his support for the measure.

Amid ongoing challenges over obtaining lethal injection drugs, Louisiana’s bill follows in the steps of other reliably red states that have expanded their execution methods — from firing squads in Idaho to the newest method of oxygen deprivation via use of nitrogen gas in Alabama.

Proponents of expanding execution methods say it’s past time for Louisiana to uphold “contractual obligations” between the state and victims’ families after a death sentence has been handed down in court. They say this bill is a tool to once again carry out executions. Opponents, however, questioned the legality of the proposed methods and have argued that new methods could violate legal protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

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Discussions of the bill on the Senate floor Thursday also reignited the age-old debate over the morality of capital punishment, which has been in state law for decades. Supporters told harrowing stories of victims’ families who are awaiting their day of justice.

Those who say the death penalty should be abolished pointed to the cost of executions, religious beliefs, racial disparities and Louisiana’s exoneration rate — from 2010 to 2020, at least 22 inmates sentenced to death have been exonerated or had their sentences reduced.

“We are not debating if the death penalty is right or wrong,” said Democratic Sen. Katrina Jackson-Andrews. “We are debating how far we will go to kill a man.”

Louisiana’s bill passed in the Senate 24-15. Each Democrat in the chamber and four Republicans voted against the bill.

Currently 58 people sit on Louisiana’s death row. However, an execution has not occurred in the state since 2010 and, at this time, none are scheduled for the future, according to the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections.

Nationally, over recent decades, the number of executions have declined sharply amid legal battles, a shortage of lethal injection drugs and even waning public support of capital punishment. That has led to a majority of states to either abolish or pause carrying out the death penalty. Last year there were 24 executions carried out in five states, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center.

However in Louisiana, between a new conservative governor and, just recently, the nation’s first execution using nitrogen gas — the first time a new method had been used in the U.S. since lethal injection was introduced in 1982 — there has been a renewed push to explore other methods.

The proposal to add the use of nitrogen gas came as no shock to political pundits in Louisiana — as the method gains traction elsewhere in the country — but reinstating electrocution has surprised some.

For four decades until 1991, when the state moved to lethal injections, Louisiana had used the electric chair — dubbed by death row inmates as “Gruesome Gertie.”

Currently, only eight states allow for electrocution, however seven of them have lethal injection as the primary method, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Likewise, lethal injection would be the preferred method in Louisiana based on the bill, but the head of Louisiana’s Department of Public Safety and Corrections would have final say.

Supreme courts in at least two states, Georgia and Nebraska, have ruled that the use of the electric chair violates their state constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment.

Louisiana’s execution bill is among a slew of “tough-on-crime” policies voted on during the state’s short special legislative session, which the governor called to address violent crime in the state.