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Federal Prisoner Transferred to Oklahoma for State Execution
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Oklahoma state flag Should the death penalty be legal?

Federal Prisoner Transferred to Oklahoma for State Execution

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ProCon Debate: Should the Death Penalty Be Legal?

ProCon Issue in the News: John Fitzgerald Hanson (also called George John Hanson) was executed by lethal injection on June 12, 2025, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

In 2001 Hanson was convicted and sentenced to death by the state of Oklahoma for the carjacking, kidnapping, and murder of 77-year-old Mary Agnes Bowles in 1999 in Tulsa. However, he was not held on Oklahoma’s death row, because he was serving a life sentence in the U.S. Penitentiary in Pollock, Louisiana, for unrelated federal convictions, including for armed robbery, for which he had been found guilty in 2000.

In 2022 Oklahoma petitioned the federal government to transfer Hanson to state custody so he could be executed, but the request was denied by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the denial was upheld by a federal judge. Some speculated that the denial might have been related to the Joe Biden administration’s imposition in 2021 of a federal moratorium on the death penalty.

On January 20, 2025, the day of his inauguration, Biden’s successor, Pres. Donald Trump, issued an executive order “restoring” the federal death penalty, and on the 23rd Oklahoma once again petitioned the federal government to transfer Hanson. The request was approved by the new U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi, on February 13.

Over the years, Hanson and his attorneys had appealed several times to overturn the conviction for which he had been sentenced to death, but they had exhausted their options after both the Oklahoma and the U.S. supreme courts denied emergency stays in 2025.

Discussion Questions

  1. Should the death penalty be legal? Why or why not?
  2. If a person has both state and federal convictions, should the state or the federal sentence take priority? The federal, because federal law is the higher law? The sentence that corresponds to the worst or most crimes? The most severe sentence? Explain your answer.
  3. If the death penalty were illegal, what would be the most appropriate punishment for such crimes as murder? Explain your answer.

Sources

  • Nolan Clay, “Oklahoma Executes John Fitzgerald Hanson for 1999 Murder of Elderly Tulsa Woman” (June 12, 2025), oklahoman.com
  • Death Penalty Information Center, “Federal Officials Refuse to Transfer Prisoner to Oklahoma for Execution” (first posted October 24, 2022; updated March 14, 2025), deathpenaltyinfo.org
  • Don Diehl, “Tulsa Jury Convicts in Slayings” (May 19, 2001), oklahoman.com
  • Ken Miller, “Oklahoma Sues Federal Prisons for Inmate It Wants to Execute” (October 27, 2022), apnews.com
  • Sean Murphy, “Judge Rules Against Oklahoma in Attempt to Execute Inmate” (December 13, 2022), independent.co.uk
  • Sean Murphy, “Oklahoma Judge Stays Execution of a Man Set to Receive Lethal Injection This Week” (June 9, 2025), apnews.com