Federal Officials Refuse to Transfer Prisoner to Oklahoma for Execution

A federal jail warden has denied an Oklahoma District Lawyer’s request to switch John Fitzgerald Hanson (pictured) to Oklahoma’s custody to be executed, stating that the switch “just isn’t within the public’s finest curiosity.” Hanson is incarcerated at a federal jail in Louisiana.

In 2000, Hanson was sentenced by the federal authorities to life in jail plus 107 years for a sequence of armed robberies. He was later sentenced to loss of life in Tulsa County, Oklahoma for the 1999 murders of Mary Bowles and Jerald Thurman. Hanson’s co-defendant, Victor Miller, was the ringleader of the crime, however Miller’s loss of life sentence was overturned and he’s now serving a life sentence. Hanson’s loss of life sentence was additionally overturned, however he was resentenced to loss of life. Oklahoma has scheduled Hanson’s execution for December 15, 2022.

In August 2022, Tulsa County District Lawyer Stephen A. Kunzweiler requested that Hanson be transferred to state custody so he might be executed. On September 28, Appearing Advanced Warden S.R. Grant replied that federal legislation “authorizes the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to switch a prisoner who is needed by a State authority to that State authority’s custody whether it is applicable, appropriate, and within the public’s finest curiosity. The Designation and Sentence Computation Heart (DSCC) has denied the request for switch, as it’s not within the public’s finest curiosity.”

Kunzweiler sought the intervention of Oklahoma Lawyer Basic John O’Connor, who wrote to BOP Regional Director Heriberto Tellez, requesting a response by October 24. O’Connor famous that the switch request was additionally supposed to facilitate Hanson’s attendance at his November 9 clemency listening to. Nowhere within the letter did O’Connor problem the BOP’s assertion that Hanson’s switch just isn’t within the public’s finest curiosity. The letter didn’t specify the actions O’Connor would take after the deadline he imposed.

Federal officers didn’t point out whether or not the denial of the switch is expounded to the moratorium on federal executions that was introduced in June 2021. President Biden expressed his opposition to the loss of life penalty throughout his marketing campaign, and Lawyer Basic Merrick Garland introduced
on June 30, 2021 that the administration would put federal executions on maintain so as to overview insurance policies adopted beneath the Trump administration. One assertion by Garland may doubtlessly clarify the BOP’s motion, as he utilized the rationale of the moratorium to all prisoners within the federal system, saying, “The Division of Justice should be certain that everybody within the federal felony justice system just isn’t solely afforded the rights assured by the Structure and legal guidelines of the US, however can be handled pretty and humanely. That obligation has particular drive in capital circumstances.”

Hanson is certainly one of 25 folks for whom the state of Oklahoma set execution dates in July 2022, with the executions set to be carried out over a two-year interval. Hanson’s attorneys say he has a number of psychological sicknesses, mind injury, and autism.