“Mr. Hoffman sincerely believes that he must practice his Buddhist breathing exercises at the critical transition between life and death, called the Bardo,” the lawyers wrote. “He believes that if he has traumatic final moments, they can negatively impact the Bardo, which can lead to a negative rebirth.”

How sincere do you think this guy’s belief in his breathing exercises really is?

And do you wonder if he became a Buddhist when the state settled on nitrogen hypoxia as his means of execution? Seeing as though Hoffman has requested that he be executed by firing squad, which Louisiana hasn’t done in modern history, or by lethal injection, which is no longer available since the drug companies won’t sell the ingredients to state prisons for those anymore, this smells a little like malicious compliance on the part of his attorneys rather than any “sincere” beliefs.

Hey Jesse, you’re a Buddhist, get it? And if they give you the gas you’ll come back as a dung beetle. So be sincere about those breathing exercises!

One thing is for sure – he certainly wasn’t a Buddhist when he killed Molly Elliott, so the demand for accommodation of his “sincerely held” religious beliefs would seem to be secondary to the legal system’s determination that he be executed according to a legally-intact trial and appeals process which leads us to this execution.

A federal judge said the nitrogen hypoxia method of execution relies on inmates taking an active part in their own executions. She stopped the execution to let Hoffman claim that other methods would be more humane, but a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned her ruling.

That was Shelly Dick, the worst federal judge in Louisiana, who seems physically incapable of a non-idiotic ruling from the bench, and the Fifth Circuit shut her down on this as they usually do.

Why Chip Moore is entertaining the possibility of following Dick down the same road when all of this has already been litigated to death, we can’t say.

Hoffman was scheduled to die Tuesday night for the 1996 killing of Mary “Molly” Elliot. She was abducted in New Orleans and taken to St. Tammany Parish, where she was raped and then shot execution-style and left in wetlands along the Pearl River.

Moore told lawyers for the state to say why Hoffman should die Tuesday night, and told executioners they could not kill Hoffman pending the results of the court hearing.

It’s hard to imagine anything new is going to come out of this hearing. What a waste of time.

It is still possible that the inmate will die as scheduled, though his lawyers expressed hope that he would be given time to argue his case that a nitrogen hypoxia execution violates his religious rights under the Constitution.

“(T)he method of nitrogen gassing denies Jessie the opportunity to meditatively breathe during his final moments,” lawyer Cecelia Kappel said. “Our state law prohibits the government from interfering with the exercise of religious faith, and Judge Moore will decide the important question of whether the state of Louisiana can take away someone’s ability to practice their religion at such a critical moment as the transition between life and death.”

So we asked Brave’s AI chatbot about all this meditative breathing business, and here’s what we found…

In Tibetan Buddhism, advanced practitioners engage in meditative practices during the death process, focusing on the clear light meditation, which is a state of great subtlety and clarity of the mind. This state is valuable for advanced meditation practices and can facilitate liberation at the time of death.

The death process in Tibetan Buddhism involves several stages. When the breathing stops, the consciousness leaves the body and passes through the dissolution stages in reverse order, starting from the black near-attainment stage.

During the black near-attainment stage, the mind of black near-attainment dissolves into the very subtle life-bearing wind in the indestructible drop at the heart, leading to a very clear vacuity free of the white, red, and black appearances—the mind of clear light of death.

Buddhist practitioners are encouraged to remain calm and focused during the death process, often engaging in breathing meditation to help the dying person concentrate on the movement of the breath, which can aid in letting go and moving on to the next life.

In summary, meditative breathing at death in Buddhism, particularly in the Tibetan tradition, involves maintaining focus on the breath and the subtle states of consciousness to facilitate a peaceful and potentially liberating transition.

Seems like Hoffman has lots of opportunity to go through his stages.

And it seems like the purpose of meditative breathing while you’re dying is that you can do it peacefully.

And if you do it correctly, it’ll help you be reborn as a person instead of a sea slug or a gecko. Or something.

So what Hoffman’s lawyers, and Hoffman, thanks to their coaching on the fine arts of Tibetan Buddhist death-meditation, are saying is that he’s afraid he’ll suck at this process at the most important point, and his breathing will get all screwed up when he’s overdosing on nitrogen, and because he won’t handle the exercises well it’s going to cast him well down the food chain in his next life.

This is a lack of confidence which would seem to be more of a coaching issue than one of religious rights. It’s too bad Molly Elliott didn’t warrant this sort of deliberation before she was defiled and murdered on Hoffman’s lunch hour.

How come Hoffman’s lawyers couldn’t find him a lama to help with his death-breathing? If that’s crucial to his achieving nirvana, that is.

If Chip Moore lets this circus show delay Hoffman’s execution for one minute he ought to be blackballed permanently by the voters in East Baton Rouge parish and cast off the bench at the next election.

As we said yesterday, enough already. Let’s get this unpleasantness over with.