The Oklahoma Department of Corrections said John Hanson was executed at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester by lethal injection at 10:11 a.m. Thursday.
Hanson, 61, was convicted and sentenced to death in Tulsa County District Court for the 1999 shooting death of 77-year-old Mary Bowles.
Hanson and an accomplice, Victor Miller, wanted the retired banker’s car for a bank robbery spree. After kidnapping the woman, Hanson shot her four to six times in a ditch near Owasso after his accomplice, Victor Miller, killed the owner of a dirt pit, Jerald Thurman, after he had spotted the two men on his property and planned to lock them in, according to court documents.
Records show Hanson, aka George John Hanson, was originally scheduled to be executed Dec. 15, 2022. At the time, he was serving a life sentence plus 107 years in a Louisiana federal prison for a series of armed robberies he committed following the Tulsa County murders.
The 2022 execution was cancelled after the Biden Administration denied two requests from the state of Oklahoma for custody of Hanson because the transfer of Hanson for his execution in Oklahoma “was not in the public interest.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 signed an executive order telling the U.S. Attorney General “to ensure that the laws that authorize capital punishment are respected and faithfully implemented, and to counteract the politicians and judges who subvert the law by obstructing and preventing the execution of capital sentences.”
Following the order, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s request for custody of Hanson was approved by the Trump Administration.
A state judge earlier this week ordered a temporary stay of Hanson’s execution until a lawsuit filed by Hanson’s lawyers against the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board was resolved.
The suit argued Hanson’s clemency hearing was unfair because board member Sean Malloy was a prosecutor in Tulsa County when his resentencing hearing was held and that Malloy was allegedly biased against Hanson.
Members of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 on May 7 to deny Hanson’s clemency request, with Malloy being one of the three voting against clemency.
On Wednesday, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ordered the stay to be vacated after concluding the district judge had no authority under the law to grant it.
A second request for a stay claiming new evidence was discovered was also denied by the Appeals Court.