Oklahoma Prisoner’s Execution Was Expedited by the Trump Administration
John Hanson, 61, received a three-drug lethal injection on the morning of June 12, 2025, and was pronounced dead by 10:11 a.m., reported USA TODAY. Hanson—who received a life sentence for carjacking, kidnapping, and killing Mary Bowles in Tulsa in 1999—had been locked up in a federal facility in Louisiana for several unrelated convictions.
In 2022, Oklahoma sued to transfer Hanson into state custody to proceed with his execution. Under the Biden administration, the Federal Bureau of Prisons denied the transfer, saying it was not in the public interest. But this February, the Trump administration approved Hanson’s transfer to Oklahoma, in line with a sweeping executive order to encourage and support the death penalty.
Three days before Hanson’s death, an Oklahoma judge granted a temporary stay of his execution. This decision, however, was immediately appealed by Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond, and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals accepted it on June 11.
As of June 25, Hanson was among 25 prisoners who have been executed across the United States so far in 2025, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (by comparison, there were 25 total executions in 2024).
Before slipping into unconsciousness in the prison’s death chamber, Hanson’s final words were reportedly “peace to everyone.”
Additional source: Associated Press
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