United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit

____________ FILED April 17, 2025 No. 25-30088 Lyle W. Cayce ____________ Clerk In re Gary Westcott, Secretary, Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections; Darrel Vannoy, Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary, In His Official Capacity,

Petitioners. ______________________________

Petition for a Writ of Mandamus to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana USDC No. 3:12-CV-796 ______________________________

PUBLISHED ORDER Before Haynes, Ho, and Oldham, Circuit Judges. James C. Ho, Circuit Judge: Thirteen years ago, a group of Louisiana death row inmates filed suit challenging the State’s use of lethal injection as a method of execution. The district court dismissed the suit as moot three years ago, because Louisiana no longer had the drugs it needed to perform lethal injection. That suit remains moot today. But on Friday, February 21, 2025— just a few weeks before Jessie Hoffman’s March 18, 2025, execution date— the district court reopened the suit under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6). It did so, not because Hoffman sought to challenge the obsolete lethal injection protocol, but because he now sought to challenge the nitrogen hypoxia protocol that the State adopted last year. Case: 25-30088 Document: 42 Page: 2 Date Filed: 04/17/2025

No. 25-30088

In response, Louisiana officials filed this emergency petition for a writ of mandamus, asking this court to vacate the district court’s February 21 order as an improper and unauthorized use of Rule 60(b)(6) to re-open a demonstrably moot case. We granted a temporary administrative stay of the order the very next day. Two days later, Hoffman filed a new suit to challenge the nitrogen hypoxia protocol. That suit was assigned to the same district judge that re- opened the thirteen-year-old lethal injection suit. The next day, we issued an order holding the mandamus petition in abeyance for one week. In doing so, we specifically noted that, “[i]n light of the new complaint, we anticipate that the district court will vacate its February 21, 2025 order.” The district court declined to do so. We now grant writ of mandamus and direct the district court to vacate its February 21, 2025 order. I. In 2012, Hoffman challenged Louisiana’s lethal injection protocol as cruel and unusual punishment. Over the ensuing decade of litigation, including the intervention of nine other death row inmates as co-plaintiffs, this suit focused exclusively on the State’s lethal injection protocol. This litigation ended in 2022 when the district court dismissed this suit as moot because Louisiana was no longer able to obtain the drugs necessary to carry out executions under the challenged protocol. See Hoffman v. Jindal, 2022 WL 969050, *12 (M.D. La. Mar. 30, 2022). The plaintiffs there moved for reconsideration. The court denied the motion. Hoffman v. Jindal, 2022 WL 16571312 (M.D. La. Nov. 1, 2022). Moreover, the district court emphasized that, if Louisiana were to select “an alternative means of execution” “in the future,” Hoffman would

2 Case: 25-30088 Document: 42 Page: 3 Date Filed: