Oklahoma officers are accusing the federal authorities of taking part in politics with its refusal to transfer a death row inmate scheduled to face execution in December to state custody.
The state is now suing the Biden administration to make sure he’s handed over.
John Hanson, 58, is scheduled to be executed for the 1999 murders of Mary Bowles and Jerald Thurman. He is presently being held on the Federal Correctional Complex in Pollock, Louisiana, and has a last-ditch Nov. 9 clemency listening to in Oklahoma.
However, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has mentioned handing Hanson over to state authorities “is not in the public interest.” Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler mentioned nobody has defined to him why Hanson is being withheld however cited the Biden administration’s stance on the death penalty.
“It smacks of politics,” he advised Fox News Digital. “They’ve not outlawed the death penalty, but they’re certainly not allowing any action on that. OK fine, if that’s what you want to do at the federal level, but this is a state case. They’re usurping state authority.”
John Hanson is scheduled to be executed in Oklahoma in December for the 1999 murders of Mary Bowles and Jerald Thurman. A battle between state and federal authorities has ignited over whether or not he will likely be transferred to Oklahoma to face execution.
(Tulsa County District Attorney)
In 2000, Hanson was sentenced to life in jail, plus an additional 107 years by a federal courtroom for a string of armed robberies. He was later handed a death sentence by an Oklahoma court for the 1999 killings.
Hanson and Victor Miller kidnapped Bowles, 77, from a shopping center after which drove her to an remoted space the place they shot and killed her and Thurman, 44, an harmless bystander.
In August, Kunzweiler requested that Hanson be transferred to state custody so he can attend his clemency listening to, and, if denied, face execution on Dec. 15. He has requested help from the workplace of state Attorney General John O’Connor after receiving a denial letter from the Bureau of Prisons.
“(The law) authorizes the Bureau of Prisons to transfer a prisoner who is wanted by a State authority to that State authority’s custody if it is appropriate, suitable, and in the public’s best interest,” the BOP letter states. “The Designation and Sentence Computation Center (DSCC) has denied the request for transfer, as it is not in the public’s best interest.”
Kunzweiler criticized the letter as being obscure and demanded an affordable clarification.
“This is not an unusual dynamic where you’re asking one jurisdiction to facilitate to another jurisdiction,” he mentioned. “I’m angry, and I want to find out how high this thing goes up.”
The Bureau of Prisons advised Fox News Digital it declined to touch upon the matter.
Photo reveals the gurney within the the execution chamber on the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Okla.
(AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)
“Based on privacy, safety, and security reasons, we do not comment on inmate’s conditions of confinement, to include transfers or reasons for transfers. Therefore, we have no information to provide,” the company mentioned.
A state appeals courtroom overturned Hanson’s death sentence in 2003, however he was re-sentenced to the identical destiny after a 2006 trial. Miller, who additionally participated within the murders, was sentenced to death in a separate trial and later re-sentenced to life in jail after prosecutors dropped their pursuit of the death penalty following years of back-and-forth throughout the courtroom system.
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The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Texas by O’Connor and Kunzweiler. The state mentioned Hanson’s execution was being “collaterally attacked by bureaucrats in the executive branch.”
“Hanson’s execution by the State of Oklahoma is consistent with any public interest in seeing that Hanson never be released from custody during his lifetime,” courtroom paperwork state. “The public has no interest in which sovereign keeps Hanson in custody during that lifetime, and the public certainly has no interest in allowing a murderer to escape the death penalty because he also happened to commit robberies prosecutable under federal law.”
The lawsuit names BOP Director Colette Peters, Heriberto Tellez, the BOP director for the company’s South Central Region and different officers as defendants. The swimsuit is asking that Hanson be handed over to Oklahoma authorities.
Throughout the saga, Kunzweiler has repeatedly taken problem with the federal authorities’s stance that transferring Hanson to Oklahoma wouldn’t serve the general public’s curiosity.
“I want to know what that means,” he mentioned. “I would suspect the 12 jurors in Oklahoma know what’s in the public best interest locally.”
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