(AFP) – A 61-year-old man convicted of a 1999 double murder was executed on Thursday in Oklahoma, the third inmate put to death in the United States this week. John Hanson was executed by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in the town of McAlester, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections said in a statement.
Hanson was convicted of carjacking and kidnapping Mary Bowles, 77, from a mall in the city of Tulsa and then shooting her to death along with a witness, Jerald Thurman. Hanson had been serving a life sentence for bank robbery in the state of Louisiana, but the Trump administration approved his transfer to Oklahoma so he could face the death penalty. President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and called on his first day in office for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”
Hanson was the third Death Row inmate executed in the United States this week. Gregory Hunt, 65, convicted of the 1988 rape and murder of his girlfriend, Karen Lane, 32, was executed by nitrogen gas on Tuesday in Alabama. Anthony Wainwright, 54, convicted of the 1994 murder of Carmen Gayheart, 23, a nursing student and mother of two young children, was put to death by lethal injection in Florida on Tuesday.
A fourth execution is to be carried out this week, in South Carolina, where Stephen Stanko, 57, is to be put to death on Friday by lethal injection. Stanko was convicted of the 2005 murders of his girlfriend, Laura Ling, 43, and Henry Turner, a 74-year-old friend.
There have been 22 executions in the United States this year: 17 by lethal injection, two by firing squad, and three by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a facemask, causing the prisoner to suffocate. The use of nitrogen gas as an execution method has been denounced by UN experts as cruel and inhumane.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.
© 2024 AFP
