June 12 (UPI) -- The state of Oklahoma executed a man convicted in the 1999 murder of a 77-year-old woman who was kidnapped at a Tulsa shopping mall, the state announced Thursday.
John Fitzgerald Hanson, 61, was pronounced dead at 10:11 a.m. CDT at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. He was scheduled to be executed in 2002, but the Biden administration refused to return him from a federal prison to Oklahoma from Louisiana, where he was serving a life sentence plus 82 years for federal crimes committed during a series of robberies.
The Oklahoma attorney general sought Hanson's move back to Oklahoma after President Donald Trump was sworn in and reinstated capital punishment by executive order on his first day in office.
"It is the policy of the United States 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," Trump wrote in the order.
Hanson and an accomplice, Victor Miller, wanted Mary Agnes Bowles' car to commit a series of robberies when they kidnapped her at the Tulsa mall. His attorney said Hanson always denied being the gunman.
Hanson's pleas for clemency were denied, as were his requests for stays of execution. This was Oklahoma's 17th execution since 2021 and Hanson was the 22nd inmate to die of capital punishment in the United States this year and the fourth this week.
