Jessie Hoffman’s demeanor hasn’t much changed since the state numbered his days, relatives say. Hoffman, who has spent more than half his life on death row, was moved last week to an isolated area within the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola where he can be watched full time until March 18, said his son, Jessie Smith. That’s the date a judge set for Hoffman to become the first death row prisoner to be executed in Louisiana since 2010, and the first ever in which the state plans to use nitrogen gas, under legislation Gov. Jeff Landry signed last year. Hoffman was convicted and sentenced to die for the murder of a woman he kidnapped and raped on the night before Thanksgiving in 1996 before he killed her on a boat dock in remote St. Tammany Parish. He was 18 then. Now 46 and slated to die in three weeks, Hoffman is “still the same, calm person,” said Smith, who wasn’t yet born when the murder happened. “Knowing the day he’s going to die is no easy task for anybody. For the most part he’s really the same guy, putting all his ducks in a row,” Smith said. “It’s basically making sure everybody else can handle what’s going on.” That image of calm belies a frenzy among Hoffman’s lawyers as they seek to halt the execution date in federal court, while urging Landry to take a new look at Hoffman and his crime in a clemency application they submitted this week. With the death over the weekend of Christopher Sepulvado, who was scheduled to be executed on March 17, Hoffman is now the only one of 56 death row prisoners in Louisiana who advocates acknowledge has exhausted his appeals. Hoffman’s petition for mercy focuses on his youth and absence of a criminal record at the time of the killing; a history of abuse and trauma at the hands of both parents while growing in New Orleans housing projects; and his remorse over a brutal crime. Mary “Molly” Elliott was 28, married and living near Covington when Hoffman, who was parking cars downtown, abducted her from a lot near her advertising job in the Central Business District. He forced her at gunpoint to drive to an ATM in New Orleans East, where she took out $200, and then to an area near the Middle Pearl River. Hoffman raped her, shot her in the head and dumped her naked body. He claimed soon after to police that the gun went off by accident. A jury took less than two hours to sentence him to death. His attorneys say it was Hoffman’s first run-in with police. Hoffman’s older brother, Marvin Fields, said the crime came as a shock. Hoffman had just graduated from Kennedy High School, where he played quarterback for the football team. He’s started the job parking cars weeks before, Fields said. “He was never a violent kid. He never got into trouble in school, never got into fights,” said Fields. Hoffman’s attorneys say he was traumatized however, having grown up in a variety of government housing while withstanding abuse. Marvin Fields said they grew up with their mother among four siblings. They moved into the Florida housing development when they were young, moved from there to the Desire projects, then others. He said beatings by their mother, who died last year, were frequent. She would hold their hands over a hot stovetop until their fingers blistered as punishment for stealing, he said. Fields also recalled a thick belt that she’d cut into shreds to whip them. “She was trying to put fear in our heart, so she could have control over her boys, I guess,” he said. Hoffman doesn’t talk openly about the crime, said Smith, who has kept in touch with his father from childhood. “For all the stories I’ve heard, this is one of those, ‘What the f**k happened?’” crimes, Smith said. “I’ve asked a million times, me and him by ourselves, and I never get an answer,” the son added. “It probably took a lot for him to get to that point, where he did what he did.” Fields says it took more for Hoffman to reach where he is now, considered by some on death row as a mentor who is devoted to a spiritual life, according to his lawyers and family. “This guy’s been in a five-by-five cell for almost 30 years, and he still has the sanity to go to AA and try to help everybody. Any problem you have, he’s trying to help you solve it,” Fields said. “My brother is so much at peace with life. He's worried about us. He's sorry for putting a burden on us. They’re about to kill you, and for us, you know, that’s what you get back. He’s like, ‘Don’t worry about me.’” Fields urged a second chance for his brother, for whom mercy may be the only recourse. “You know, his sentence doesn’t match his life at all,” he said. “it’s like he can change lives, and they want to kill him, and he’s a big influence on people. And you know, anybody can kill somebody, but it takes somebody special to change people’s lives.” Read more | 
