Next scheduled Oklahoma execution won't happen this week because of Biden administration

Oklahoma will not carry out an execution scheduled for Thursday morning because convicted murderer John Fitzgerald Hanson remains in a federal prison in Louisiana.

"His transfer to state authorities for state execution is not in the public interest," a regional director for the Federal Bureau of Prisons told Oklahoma Attorney General John O'Connor in an Oct. 17 letter.

The state is now suing in federal court in Texas for his return.

"The denial of transfer directly assists a prisoner in escaping punishment for one of his murders, which undermines the public interest in punishing all convicted crimes," attorneys for the state argued to a judge.

The denial came after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland imposed a moratorium last year on federal executions pending a review of capital punishment policies and procedures.

"Serious concerns have been raised about the continued use of the death penalty across the country, including arbitrariness in its application, disparate impact on people of color, and the troubling number of exonerations," Garland wrote in a July 1, 2021, memo.

President Joe Biden promised during his 2020 campaign "to work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.”

Hanson, 58, faces execution for the fatal shooting of retired banker Mary Agnes Bowles after he and an accomplice kidnapped her from a Tulsa mall on Aug. 31, 1999. The victim was 77.

They had wanted her car for a robbery spree. Hanson shot her in a ditch near Owasso after the accomplice gunned down a dirt pit owner, Jerald Thurman, who had spotted them on his property, according to testimony at his trial. He later confessed to a friend, saying, "Everything went bad."

Hanson was given life in prison without the possibility of parole for the dirt pit owner's murder.

He has spent most of the last 20 years in federal prison, though, for bank robbery and other federal crimes. He is now at the U.S. Penitentiary in Pollock, Louisiana, serving a life sentence.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals in July scheduled 25 executions through the end of 2024. Hanson's execution was set to begin at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler asked in August that Hanson be returned to Oklahoma no later than Oct. 1. O'Connor got involved after the acting warden at the federal penitentiary turned the DA down.

Attorneys for the state argue that the transfer denial is in clear violation of federal law. Attorneys for the Federal Bureau of Prisons argue "there are several 'plausible reasons' for BOP’s determination that transferring Hanson to State custody is not in the public interest at this time."

The determination must be upheld if there is any reasonably conceivable facts that could provide a rational basis for it, the federal attorneys told U.S. District Judge Reed C. O'Connor.

"A rational decisionmaker could find that the interest in effectuating the federal sentence outweighs the State’s interest in executing Hanson," they wrote in a legal filing Dec. 2. "A rational decisionmaker also could have determined that Hanson should not be transferred while the current moratorium on implementation of the federal death penalty remains in effect."

A final ruling on the state's challenge of the denial could take months. The first hearing is set for Dec. 22 in Fort Worth.

If returned, Hanson still could avoid execution if the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommends clemency, and Gov. Kevin Stitt agrees.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma's next scheduled execution blocked by Biden administration