Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to serve death penalty

George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, was sentenced to death for the 1999 murder of Mary Bowles. (Photo provided by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections)

OKLAHOMA CITY — An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date.

George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date.

The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

Hanson, now 60, was convicted of kidnapping Bowles, a retired banker and well-known volunteer, from the parking lot of a Tulsa mall and shooting her to death at a dirt pit near Owasso. His accomplice, Victor Cornell Miller, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for killing a witness of the murder, bystander Jerald Max Thurman.

Attorneys for Hanson said the jury that sentenced him to death was unaware of evidence that Miller bragged about killing Bowles. Hanson’s lawyers didn’t investigate or present evidence of his autism and related impairments, his current attorneys said.

The Tulsa County district judge who presided over Hanson’s trial, Caroline Wall, wrote that she would have recommended a sentence of life without parole, according to a 2006 report. 

Miller took advantage of Hanson and roped him into a series of crimes, Hanson’s attorneys said.

“John Hanson is a peaceful prisoner whom correctional staff believe adds value to the prison community,” his attorney Emma Rolls said. “He poses no danger to anyone in prison. The jury that convicted him never knew that his co-defendant had bragged about being the real killer, and the trial judge herself felt this omission warranted a life sentence. These are exactly the kind of circumstances for which clemency is needed, to prevent an unnecessary and pointless execution.”

Attorney General Gentner Drummond requested that Hanson transfer to Oklahoma from a federal prison in Louisiana where he was serving a life sentence for an unrelated bank robbery.  

Hanson initially was scheduled for execution in 2022, but the Federal Bureau of Prisons, then under President Joe Biden’s administration, refused to move him to Oklahoma. 

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi approved the transfer request on Feb. 13 after President Donald Trump ordered the federal government to comply with capital punishment sentences.

Hanson is now imprisoned at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

“The monster who abducted and murdered a 77-year-old woman more than 25 years ago is finally set to pay for his crime,” Drummond said. “The family of Mary Bowles has waited many agonizing years for George John Hanson to be brought to justice, and on June 12, that day finally will come.”

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