Death Penalty News

On Dec. 23, 2024, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. commuted the sentences of nearly all federal death row prisoners, sparing 37 men from execution. Just 28 days later, on Jan. 20, 2025, newly inaugurated President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order encouraging state and local prosecutors to pursue new charges against those same prisoners, reopening the possibility of capital punishment in state courts.

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma executed a man Thursday whose transfer to state custody was expedited by the Trump administration. John Fitzgerald Hanson, 61, received a three-drug lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and was pronounced dead at 10:11 a.m., prison officials said. Hanson was sentenced to die after he was convicted of carjacking, kidnapping and killing a Tulsa woman in 1999. “Peace to everyone,” Hanson said while strapped to a gurney inside the prison’s death chamber.

An Oklahoma appeals court on Wednesday ordered a stay of execution to be lifted for a man on death row, clearing the way for him to receive a lethal injection for killing a Tulsa woman in 1999.  John Fitzgerald Hanson, 61, has been scheduled to be put to death Thursday, but a district court judge temporarily halted the execution this week after Hanson’s attorneys argued he didn’t receive a fair clemency hearing before the state’s Pardon and Parole Board. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ordered that temporary stay of execution be lifted.

Hanson was transferred to Oklahoma custody in March by federal officials following through on President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order to more actively support the death penalty. OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An Oklahoma judge granted a temporary stay of execution Monday to a man whose transfer to death row was expedited by the Trump administration and who was scheduled to receive a lethal injection this week. John Fitzgerald Hanson, 61, was set to die Thursday for killing a Tulsa woman in 1999. Hanson’s lawyers have argued that he did not receive a fair clemency hearing last month before the state’s five-member Pardon and Parole Board. They claim board member Sean Malloy was biased because he worked for the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office when Hanson was being prosecuted.

Over the next four days, four inmates in four different states are scheduled to be put to death – a cluster that, while not abnormal, comes amid a national uptick in executions while President Donald Trump calls for the death penalty’s expansion. A cluster of executions is “not that unusual,” according to Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Policy Project. “But it’s become increasingly rare as use of the death penalty has diminished.” Indeed, the number of executions each year remains far lower than its peak in 1999, when nearly 100 people were put to death nationwide. That figure steadily decreased until the Covid-19 pandemic, when it reached historic lows, Dunham said.

A group of federal inmates who were resentenced under the Biden administration filed a lawsuit trying to stop their move to a high-security Colorado prison. A federal judge has denied a legal attempt, for now, to prevent the U.S. government from transferring death row inmates whose sentences were commuted by then-President Joe Biden to the "Supermax" in Colorado, the highest-security federal prison in the country. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly in Washington, D.C., ruled Tuesday against issuing a preliminary injunction requested in a lawsuit brought by 21 of the 37 former death row inmates , all of whom saw their sentences changed to life without parole in December. "The Court cannot grant that relief — at least not now," Kelly wrote in his opinion, saying that the plaintiffs must first exhaust their administrative appeals within the federal Bureau of Prisons' transfer process. The decision comes as the BOP has said it would not transfer any of the plaintiff...

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 Oklahoma attorney general requested the transfer after President Donald Trump directed the DOJ to ensure states have enough lethal injection drugs to carry out executions OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma’s top prosecutor asked the federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer an inmate to state custody so that he could be executed for his role in the kidnapping and killing of a 77-year-old woman in 1999. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond requested the transfer Thursday of inmate George John Hanson, citing President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order this week that directs the U.S. Department of Justice to more actively support the death penalty.

Among the slew of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office, one called to reinstate the death penalty for federal death row inmates. However, only three individuals remain on federal death row after former President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 people on Dec. 23, sentencing them to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Trump criticized Biden’s decision in his executive order on the death penalty, signed on Jan. 20, and instructed the attorney general to “further evaluate whether these offenders can be charged with state capital crimes and shall recommend appropriate action to state and local authorities.”

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose.  Capital punishment is an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens.  Before, during, and after the founding of the United States, our cities, States, and country have continuously relied upon capital punishment as the ultimate deterrent and only proper punishment for the vilest crimes.  Our Founders knew well that only capital punishment can bring justice and restore order in response to such evil.  For this and other reasons, capital punishment continues to enjoy broad popular support.