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OKLAHOMA CITY — Attorney General Gentner Drummond requested Friday that a prisoner on Oklahoma’s death row be transferred from federal prison in Louisiana so he can be executed.
George John Hanson, 60, was convicted for the 1999 kidnapping and murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles.
Hanson kidnapped Bowles, a retired banker, from a Tulsa mall and later shot her to death at a dirt pit near Owasso. She was shot a total of nine times.
A bystander, Jerald Max Thurman, who witnessed the murder, was killed by Hanson’s accomplice, Victor Cornell Miller. Hanson received a sentence without parole for his role in that slaying.
Drummond asked that Hanson be transferred to the Lexington Assessment and Reception Center before March 20 so that he is eligible for the next available execution date.
“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 in a letter. “As a result, I respectfully request that you comply with federal law and President Trump’s righteous order by transferring Inmate Hanson to state custody.”
Hanson was previously scheduled for execution in Oklahoma in 2022 but the Federal Bureau of Prisons denied Oklahoma’s request to transfer.
Hanson is currently in federal prison in Louisiana serving a separate life sentence for a bank robbery, according to a news release.
Drummond’s office said this request is prompted by an executive order from President Donald Trump on Monday instructing the implementation of capital punishment.
This story was originally published by the Oklahoma Voice which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network, including the Daily Montanan, supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.