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Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond requested the
transfer Thursday of inmate George John Hanson, citing President
Donald Trump's sweeping executive order this week that directs
the U.S. Department of Justice to more actively support the
death penalty.
Hanson, 60, whose name in Oklahoma court records is listed as
John Fitzgerald Hanson, was sentenced to death in Tulsa County,
Oklahoma, after he was convicted of carjacking, kidnapping and
killing Mary Bowles, 77, after he and an accomplice kidnapped
the woman from a Tulsa shopping mall. Hanson also is serving a
life sentence for several federal convictions, including being a
career criminal, that predate his state death sentence.
Drummond's predecessor, John O'Connor, previously sought
Hanson's transfer and sued the Bureau of Prisons in 2022 after
it refused to turn over the inmate to state custody during
President Joe Biden's administration. The agency's regional
director at the time, Heriberto Tellez, said the transfer was
not in the public interest, a decision Drummond called
“appalling.”
A federal judge ultimately dismissed Oklahoma's case, ruling
that the Bureau of Prisons director has broad discretion over
whether to refuse a transfer request based on his determination
of the public interest.
“The prior administration's refusal to transfer Inmate Hanson to
state custody to finally carry out a decades-old death sentence
is the epitome of subverting and obstructing the execution of a
capital sentence,” Drummond wrote Thursday in his letter to
Danon Colbert, the Bureau of Prisons' acting regional director.
Randilee Giamusso, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons,
declined to comment on Drummond's request.
“Based on privacy, safety, and security reasons, we do not
comment on any inmate’s conditions of confinement, including
transfers or reasons for transfers,” Giamusso wrote in an email
to The Associated Press.
Oklahoma has put to death 15 inmates since resuming executions
in October 2021 following a de facto moratorium that resulted
from problematic lethal injections in 2014 and 2015. Its next
execution is scheduled for March 20.
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