At least three bills in the 2025 legislative session that began Monday touch on capital punishment, aiming to refine processes amid a press by Louisiana officials to carry out more death sentences.
Two bills filed thus far have provisions that concern who can be present when a person on death row is killed. The issue played a prominent role in the case of Jessie Hoffman Jr., whose lawyers argued unsuccessfully for the ability to attend his execution last month.
Overall, capital punishment proposals retain a heightened significance as executions move beyond the theoretical for the more than 50 people still locked up on Louisiana's death row. A 15-year pause in such killings came to an end with Hoffman's execution.
That event, a controversial new nitrogen gas execution method and support from the governor and attorney general have kicked more legal cases into motion. As recently as Friday, the state's Supreme Court ordered district judges to rescind death warrants in two Caddo Parish cases with execution dates calendared for this spring.
Courts did not sign off on requests from Hoffman's legal team to be present while he died, citing case law from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that said his claims of the right to a lawyer while being executed were "without merit," records show.
HB207 takes that issue on directly. If approved and signed into law, it would amend state statutes dealing with executions to say that they must take place "in the presence of" a "legal representative" of the person being executed.
The bill's sponsor, state Rep. Patricia "Pat" Moore, D-Monroe, said she was detained in a committee meeting and unavailable for a scheduled interview Tuesday.
Cecelia Kappel, director of The Center for Social Justice at Loyola University New Orleans, called the presence of a legal representative a "bare minimum." Attorneys can help explain legal decisions from courts to the person being executed, make sure the state adheres to the specifics of its planned protocol and otherwise monitor the execution for anything that violates the law.
Kappel represented Hoffman, and said there were "multiple junctures" during his execution when he would have benefited from an attorney's presence. Kappel said she was driving from Louisiana State Penitentiary to Baton Rouge, intending to make filings in his cases, as the state carried out his sentence. She did not find out what was happening concerning his execution until it was too late.
"If an attorney had been there with him, that could have been communicated to [Department of Public Safety & Corrections] officials," she said.Hoffman's execution is the first in Louisiana that Bill Quigley, a professor emeritus at Loyola University New Orleans, recalls where counsel was not allowed to attend. Quigley worked on Hoffman’s case.
Other states, including Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas, permit the presence of a legal representative for the person being executed as a witness to their execution, state statutes suggest.
"Other" witnesses
The sponsor of another bill pertaining to executions, HB394, calls it a "belts and suspenders" approach to tweak the state's capital punishment practices.
State Rep. Nicholas "Nicky" Muscarello, R-Hammond, characterized its provisions as "minor technical changes." If approved as filed, it would expand the legal execution window from three hours to five hours and make changes to requirements in the law about resetting execution dates. It also would remove the current legal range of five to seven witnesses, instead allowing "other" witnesses as cleared by the Department of Public Safety & Corrections.
Muscarello said he is "working with the governor's office" on the bill and they did not discuss the importance of the witness provision with him in detail. But, he said, it gives discretion to the Department of Public Safety & Corrections as to who can be a witness.
"They're the professionals; that's their field of expertise. I think they should be able to allow who they want as witnesses as well," Muscarello said.
The governor's aides did not respond to a request for comment. The Department of Public Safety & Corrections also did not fulfill a request for comment.
Quigley said the bill appears to codify changes in law after "gaps" in the state's approach during the legal fight over Hoffman's case, including a fierce dispute over whether his execution date was required to be reset after a stay from one court halting it.
In Quigley's read, HB394 would try to give some direction to the courts in situations like one court granting a stay of execution, followed by another court reversing it, he said.
Muscarello also ran the bill to legalize the state's nitrogen gas method at the governor's request. His connection to bills in this subject matter area is linked to a relationship with the Guzzardo family, who have ties to Muscarello's district.
The family has been active in advocacy around related issues following the 1995 murder of Stephanie Guzzardo. Todd Wessinger faces the death penalty in that case.
An ‘impossible burden'
A third bill deals with post-conviction procedures, making a swath of changes to proceedings that happen after someone has been convicted of a crime. Those are an integral part of capital cases, often playing out over years or even decades in multiple courts.
HB572, whose sponsor Brian Glorioso, R-Slidell, did not fulfill an interview request before deadline, also includes lines that specify capital-case procedures.
In cases pending as of July 1, 2025, the Louisiana attorney general's office would assume responsibility for responding to petitions for post-conviction relief including habeas corpus petitions, centralizing responsibility away from local district attorneys.
Attorney General Liz Murrill placed the bill on a list of her legislative priorities issued Tuesday. She said in a statement that post-conviction proceedings in the state "have long been abused," and the bill provides reforms to the benefit of victims and defendants.
“In death penalty cases, families of the victims have waited decades to obtain the justice promised by the State. The decades of inaction perpetuated by lawyers and individuals convicted of heinous crimes and perpetuated by this system is cruel and unjust," she added.
Murrill has lately stumped for the conclusion of death-sentence cases, including in remarks at a news conference immediately following the execution in March.
In HB572, Kappel flagged a provision concerning cases "abandonment," which aims to place new case deadlines she said are out of step with other states.
"Even in places like Texas, they don't have a provision that forces a post-conviction petitioner to basically tell the court to rule or else risks waiving his entire post-conviction proceedings. That's pretty draconian," she said.
Prosecutors made a similar argument in Darrell Draughn’s and Marcus Donte Reed's recent death-warrant cases — that by not completing certain filings in the cases, the men gave up their right to further review by courts.
More filings and legal determinations are required in both Draughn’s and Reed's cases before their warrants can be issued, the state's Supreme Court said in nearly identical per curiam orders on Friday night.
This week, the Innocence Project New Orleans circulated materials to supporters objecting to HB572, calling it an "explicit attempt" to make post-conviction cases more difficult for people in prison.
The bill "puts an impossible burden on people who do not have lawyers to prove that they are wrongfully incarcerated and stops people from litigating their rights after a certain period of time even if you have new proof of your innocence," the group wrote.
Post-conviction cases have been a subject of interest for the legislature over at least the last several months. Last fall, legislators called in New Orleans' District Attorney Jason Williams for a contentious hearing over handling of post-conviction cases by a unit in his office focused on civil rights.
Lawmakers at that hearing tore into Williams for what they framed as leniency for people convicted of serious crimes.
During the hearing, Williams said his office's review of old cases grew out of high rates of faulty convictions in Orleans Parish, which "sunk public trust in our system" and "made it harder to prosecute violent crime, and historically made us less safe than other parishes."
This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.
