Judge grants stay of execution for Oklahoma death row inmate scheduled to die this week

John Hanson was convicted in the 1999 carjacking and murder of Mary Bowles, as well as the murder of bystander Jerald Thurman. He was scheduled to be executed on June 12.

Oklahoma County Judge Richard Ogden granted the temporary stay of execution on Monday.

Hanson’s attorneys filed a lawsuit last month, asking for a new clemency hearing. The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 to deny clemency for Hanson, but his attorney said one of those three votes was made by a former assistant district attorney in Tulsa County, who worked Hanson’s 2006 re-sentencing.

“Board member Sean Malloy served as an assistant district attorney in the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office from 2003 to 2006. That is the precise time period in which Mr. Hanson’s resentencing trial was re-prosecuted by the Tulsa County District Attorney,” Emma Rolls, an attorney for Hanson, said last month. “Compounding this conflict is the fact that Mr. Malloy’s boss, former District Attorney Tim Harris, was one of the state’s key presenters at the clemency hearing, and he gave an impassioned plea for Mr. Hanson’s execution, and it’s our position simply that Mr. Hanson be given his Oklahoma Constitutional rights before the state of Oklahoma takes his life.”

The lawsuit also asked for a stay of execution, which the judge granted.

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