BATON ROUGE - Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said she expects no legal problems with the state's adoption of nitrogen gas as a form of execution for death row inmates, saying she expects the state to resume executions within the next month.

Governor Jeff Landry confirmed Monday that the state would begin to use nitrogen gas, which was introduced in Alabama last year, as an execution method. Landry said he wanted to resume executions "to uphold the promises" made to the families of those who died from violence.

Murrill said the earliest execution date was set for Larry Roy out of Rapides Parish, who initially had a sentencing date of March 19. However, that warrant was recalled by the judge to clear up questions before the warrant is reset. Murrill believes the execution will still take place some time in March, assuming "there's no stays issued by state or federal court, which is a big assumption."

"There's always a lot of litigation around the death penalty. I will say this, nitrogen hypoxia has been litigated in Alabama, and Alabama has successfully carried out several executions with this method, so I do not expect to have any problems with the courts of appeals," Murrill said.

Murrill said some of the death row inmates have "exhausted their state and federal appellate rights" and are now eligible to be put to death. Additionally, she said that the executions could happen in rapid succession and mentioned four cases where they've exhausted the aforementioned appellate rights.

Two of those cases are in Rapides, one is in DeSoto and one is in St. Tammany, she said.

A warrant has to be signed by a district judge in the parish, and the date being set allows inmates to continue seeking relief, injunctions, pardons or clemency, according to Murrill. Once that is all exhausted, including any stay from the U.S. Supreme Court, then the process toward execution can begin.

Shortly after Murrill's comments, the attorney for Christopher Sepulvado, an inmate on death row in DeSoto, had a warrant scheduling his execution for March 17.