Feds Send Inmate to Oklahoma for Execution

Federal prison officials transferred an inmate to Oklahoma custody so that he can be executed for a 1999 killing, following through on President Trump's sweeping executive order to more actively support the death penalty. George John Hanson, 60, was moved from a federal prison in Louisiana to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, over the weekend, Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokeswoman Kay Thompson confirmed Monday.

• Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond sought Hanson's transfer earlier this year, and Trump's new Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered his transfer last month. Drummond said his office is expected to request an execution date for Hanson later this year.

• Hanson's attorneys in the Federal Public Defender's Office in Oklahoma sought to prevent his transfer from federal custody, the AP reports. They have also argued that Hanson should not be executed because he is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the killing occurred on the Cherokee Nation Reservation, and neither tribe supports Hanson's execution.
• Hanson was sentenced to death in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, after he was convicted of carjacking, kidnapping, and killing Mary Bowles. Hanson and an accomplice kidnapped the 77-year-old woman from a Tulsa shopping mall. After she was killed at an isolated dirt pit, "Hanson's accomplice then killed Jerald Max Thurman, who was at the scene and witnessed the crime," Drummond's office said in a news release.
• Hanson had been serving a life sentence in federal prison in Louisiana for several federal convictions, including bank robbery, that predate his state death sentence.
• "For the family and friends of Mary Bowles, the wait for justice has been a long and frustrating one," Drummond said in a statement.

(More Oklahoma stories.)