State Attorney General Requests Federal Prisoner Transfer To Carry Out Death Penalty
State Attorney General Gentner Drummond is asking for convicted murderer George John Hanson to be transferred from federal prison in Louisiana to Oklahoma.
The transfer would make it possible for Hanson to receive the death penalty.
Hanson is serving a life sentence plus 107 years in federal prison.
He was arrested by the feds after a series of armed robberies in Northeast Oklahoma.
But before the robberies, Hanson is alleged to have committed murder in Tulsa.
He was convicted for two 1999 deaths while he was already serving his sentence. The Tulsa County District Court gave him the death penalty.
Even though he was scheduled to be executed in Oklahoma in 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons denied his transfer out of the federal prison where he’s being held.
The bureau has said it’s not in “the public interest.”
But Drummond still wants Hanson transferred back to be executed. He hopes Trump’s Department of Justice will make that possible.
Oklahoma State Superintendent Claims Immediate Update to History Standards
State Superintendent Ryan Walters says his agency has updated school history standards to comply with President Donald Trump’s new executive order.
Walters issued a news release Thursday afternoon claiming Oklahoma is the first state to implement Trump’s order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and Mount Denali to Mount McKinley.
According to the release, the updates are effective immediately.
But it’s unclear which standards have received the update.
The current standards from OSDE’s website remain the 2019 version, and it does not mention the Gulf or Denali.
The announcement could refer to the proposed social studies standards up for revision this year, though it’s unclear what would be effective immediately.
The department did not return a request to clarify the announcement.
Homeless Advocate Critical Of Proposed Legislation To Criminalize Stolen Shopping Carts
An Oklahoma City advocate for the homeless is critical of a bill that would make it a crime to take or possess a store's shopping cart.
City Care CEO Rachel Freeman said giving a person a fine which they cannot pay or giving them a jail record is not the solution to stolen carts or to homelessness.
“Criminalizing poverty has never worked. There are evidence-based interventions that are well documented and do work,” Freeman told News Gurus.
Instead of bills like this Freeman would rather see the legislature support programs to get people out of poverty and homelessness.
Oklahoma Tribes Intervene In Federal Lawsuit Against Prosecutors
Three Oklahoma tribal nations are getting involved in the Department of Justice’s recent lawsuit against two local prosecutors accused of overstepping their jurisdiction.
The Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations have all moved to intervene in support of the DOJ over the lawsuit against attorneys Matthew Ballard and Carol Iski over their violations of federal jurisdiction laws.
The motion, filed in both the Northern and Eastern district courts, calls for Ballard and Iski to stop prosecuting cases involving tribal defendants.
In a news release, all three tribes praised the DOJ and called the prosecutions by the northeast Oklahoma DAs a direct violation of tribal sovereignty.
Ballard and Iski have been accused of improperly filing seven cases involving Native Americans on behalf of the state in violation of the McGirt precedent.
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