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’s attorneys had argued the 3-2 vote against recommending clemency was tainted because one of the members of the board had worked for the same district attorney’s office that prosecuted his case. The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office maintained the district court judge didn’t have the authority to issue a stay of execution.
The appeals court wrote in its order that the district judge didn’t have the authority and that even if he did, the order was “an extreme and unwarranted measure” given that even if the member’s vote wasn’t counted, a tie still would not have resulted in a clemency recommendation.
Hanson’s attorneys said in a statement that they plan to appeal to the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
“No person facing execution should have to plead for mercy in front of a decisionmaker with direct ties to their prosecution,” said one of Hanson’s attorneys, Emma Rolls. “This case is also about the integrity of Oklahoma’s clemency process and the promise of a fair, impartial hearing.”
Hanson has a separate appeal pending before the US Supreme Court alleging prosecutors failed to disclose information about a key witness to his defense team.
Hanson was sentenced to death in Tulsa County after he was convicted of carjacking, kidnapping and killing Mary Bowles. Authorities said he and an accomplice kidnapped the woman from a Tulsa shopping mall.
Hanson had been serving a life sentence in federal prison in Louisiana for several unrelated federal convictions. But President Donald Trump’s administration expedited his transfer to Oklahoma custody in March, following through on a sweeping executive order to more actively support the death penalty.
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