On the evening of Tuesday, March 18, 2025, the State of Louisiana, under the direct orders of Governor Jeff Landry, executed Jessie Hoffman, Jr., age 46. Department of Corrections officials restrained him on the gurney with brown leather straps and secured a plastic gas mask over his face. They forced nitrogen gas into his lungs, suffocating him to death for 19 minutes, witnesses describing his final minutes as violent and full of obvious pain and suffering. Louisiana law prohibits the use of gas to induce hypoxia as a method in the euthanasia of animals.

This was the first execution in Louisiana in fifteen years. Reporting in The Lens described the rehearsals conducted by prison staff ahead of the 2010 execution of Gerald Bordelon. Molly Fowler wrote, “From our room, we could see only two things. The machine that would push the poison into his veins in three steps. And the feet of the guard playing Bordelon. As I was watching, I saw that he was trembling. . . I had never considered that this process, Gerald Bordelon’s execution, might affect him. I had assumed he was in it for the overtime.”

ACT I: REHEARSAL

[Curtain rises on the gurney]

Closed doors for a closed rehearsal: the choreography of death.
Officers walk their colleague to the gurney, practiced pallbearers, the timekeeper counts
each step. The one cast as condemned twitches as they strap him down, a reflex
that can’t split the hands that kill from the feet that march to orders.

Governor—can I call you Jeff? Tell me, do you ever watch these dry runs?
Have you seen the stage dressed, the blade glint, the hungry fire snap at the wood?

ACT II: HISTORICAL PERFORMANCE

[Shadows sway on the platform]

Once, in New Orleans, the gallows groaned
under bodies too young, too Black to choose
their governor, planks creaking beneath their
swing, crowds buzzing low like flies.

Once, in Bossier City, Camellias rode at night—
robes once white, but gritty with ash and bone-dust,
hooves soft pattern on the cotton fields’ edge,
kerosene sharp in the humid summer air.

Once, in Opelousas, the mob needed three things:
a name, a lie, a cypress to bear the weight.

In this
blood
stained
boot,
a trial’s
just a
longer
rope.

ACT III: MODERN PRODUCTION

[Lights flicker in Angola]

In Bogalusa, the night riders ride still—headlights replacing torches, laughter
snapping like sparks over radios, black boots shining, hands still stained.

The chamber waits, props lined up, script locked in.
Your signature smudges the air with coal, a mark that coils Angola’s throat.
Jeff, do you sleep through the clank of that gurney rolling?
Nitrogen chokes quiet, you say, as if a soft death unties the rope’s old grip.

And don’t we always swear it won’t happen again, then build the same rooms?

Still, your hands don’t shake, still, the antiseptic stench
drowns fear’s rust blooming under bleach.

Still, the state fills its bank with bones.

EPILOGUE

[Curtain falls]

Outside your office, I watch mockingbirds weave nests from torn-up death warrants,
their wings brushing your name, their songs clanking like keys, thudding like doors,
choking like last breaths—louder than you wrote them.

When the spotlight dims, when the seats go cold, programs balled up in fists,
when the silence fades to a hum that gnaws the quiet
for justice never served—what then, Jeff?

Do you exit stage left and rehearse your next line?
Or does some small piece of you feel the twitch in your own legs
when death walks off the page and looks us all in the eye?

August 3, 2025