Hanson, whose name in Oklahoma court records is listed as John Fitzgerald Hanson, has been serving a life sentence in federal prison in Louisiana for several federal convictions, including being a career criminal, that predate his state death sentence.
President Donald Trump's newly installed attorney general, Pam Bondi, has ordered the transfer of a federal inmate to Oklahoma so he can be executed, following through on Trump's sweeping executive order to more actively support the death penalty.
Bondi this week directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer inmate George John Hanson, 60, so that he can be executed for his role in the kidnapping and killing of a 77-year-old woman in Tulsa in 1999.
“The Department of Justice owes it to the victim and her family — as well as the public — to transfer inmate Hanson so that Oklahoma can carry out this just sentence,” Bondi wrote in a memo to the BOP's director.
Drummond’s predecessor, John O’Connor, previously sought Hanson’s transfer and sued the Bureau of Prisons in 2022 after it refused to turn over the inmate to state custody during President Joe Biden’s administration.
