In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court refused to grant a stay to block Louisiana’s execution of an inmate by use of nitrogen gas. 46-year-old Jessie Hoffman Jr. became the first person ever to be executed in the state through this method on Tuesday evening .

The Louisiana State Penitentiary scheduled Jessie Hoffman’s execution by nitrogen gas on Tuesday, years after the Louisiana Supreme Court convicted him of kidnapping, raping, and murdering Molly Elliott in 1997. Elliott was 28 years old at the time and was an advertising executive from New Orleans.

The court originally sentenced Hoffman to death by legal injection, but Department of Public Safety and Corrections secretary Gary Escott changed the method of execution to nitrogen hypoxia on February 20, just one year after Louisiana lawmakers passed a bill authorizing the use of nitrogen and electrocution as execution methods.

After a series of legal battles in the state courts, a federal court temporarily blocked the execution ruling that this largely untested method of execution could cause such “pain and terror” in violation of the Eighth Amendment‘s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. That ruling was quickly set aside by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and was immediately referred to the Supreme Court.

In a very brief and unsigned order, the Court refused to intervene in the matter. The unexplained dissents of Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson were noted in the order. The only other dissenting justice, Neil Gorsuch, expressed concerns regarding the lower court’s unwarranted judgment regarding the “sincerity of Mr. Hoffman’s religious beliefs” and the Fifth Circuit’s failure to “confront the district court’s apparent legal error.”

One of Hoffman’s arguments in the lower court had been that the nitrogen hypoxia method of execution will “substantially burden his religious exercise [as a Buddhist] by interfering with his meditative breathing as he dies.” Commenting on the lower court’s response to this argument, Gorsuch said:

[Hoffman] argues that the State’s chosen method of execution—nitrogen hypoxia—violates his rights under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA)…the district court rejected his RLUIPA claim anyway based on its own “find[ing]” about the kind of breathing Mr. Hoffman’s faith requires That finding contravened the fundamental principle that courts have “no license to declare…whether an adherent has ‘correctly perceived’ the commands of his religion.” The Court of Appeals failed…even to mention the RLUIPA claim Mr. Hoffman pressed on appeal. Perhaps that claim ultimately lacks merit. But the Fifth Circuit’s unexplained omission leaves this Court poorly positioned to assess it. I would therefore grant the stay application and petition for writ of certiorari, vacate the judgment of the Fifth Circuit, and remand for that court to address Mr. Hoffman’s RLUIPA claim in the first instance

Presently, four states permit execution by nitrogen hypoxia — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. Alabama became the first state last year to specifically authorize such an execution in the US since lethal injection was first introduced in 1982. That execution lasted more than 20 minutes that apparently included four-to-six minutes of struggling, writhing and shaking against restraints, followed by five-to-seven minutes of deep breathing.