The Oklahoma department of corrections is in dispute with the city of McAlester over who owns the state’s unwired electric chair, which may be put back into service if challenges to Oklahoma’s lethal injection procedure are upheld. 
 
 
 
 Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie said the electric chair is in storage. 
 
 
 
 “We haven’t had much discussion about it, because it’s not been real pressing at the moment,” Massie said. “We haven’t had that discussion yet, seriously.” 
 
 Asked if the chair would be rewired and used again, Massie said: “It is possible.” 
 
 But he added: “There is not much possibility of that, unless lethal injection is declared unconstitutional." 
 
 State law allows for the electric chair or a firing squad to be used only if lethal injection is found to be unconstitutional. Oklahoma’s execution procedures are under review after the April 29 botched lethal injection of Clayton Lockett, who writhed, groaned and tried to speak. He suffered what corrections director Robert Patton said appeared to be a massive heart attack and died 43 minutes after the execution began. There have been no executions in the US since Lockett's. 
 
 Attorneys for Charles Warner, who was to die the same night as Lockett in a rare double execution, are watching the review closely. He was granted a stay of execution after Lockett's death and is now scheduled to die on November 13. 
 
 The dispute over the chair predates the current execution crisis. Massie told the McAlester News-Capital on Friday that he stands by the department’s claim to the chair. 
 
 
 
 McAlester mayor Steve Harrison told the Guardian that the electric chair should be on display for the public to see. 
 
 “I would like to get it displayed somewhere since it is a historical artefact,” Harrison said. “I don’t think it does anybody any good for it to sit in storage somewhere.” 
 
 He said the chair, nicknamed Old Sparky, had been in a museum McAlester – a town of about 18,000 that is home to the state’s death chamber – until the corrections department took it back. 
 
 “The transfer happened a number of years ago, and I’m not sure anybody has the complete story on who legally owns it,” Harrison said. “I’m not sure where it is.” 
 
 Harrison said he expects if Oklahoma planned to electrocute an inmate, the state would get a new electric chair. 
 
 “That chair has not been used since 1966,” Harrison said. “My assumption would be if it ever got to the point the electric chair was needed again they would start with a new one. Can’t imagine they would use one that hasn’t been used in 50 years.” 
 
 The chair, first used in 1915, was used to execute 82 inmates before it was retired. The last inmate to sit in it was James French, who was killed on 10 August, 1966, for the murder of his cellmate. 
 
 Bill Ervin, of McAlester, whose law firm represents the city, said the chair is “not much to look at.” 
 
 “It’s an antique,” Ervin said. “If that’s the one they’re talking about, I don’t know why they would use that one (in an execution).” 
 
 As states grapple with a European-led boycott over lethal injection drugs, some have proposed returning to old methods such as the electric chair and the firing squad. This month, Tennessee’s governor approved the use of the electric chair for executions where drugs could not be acquired. 
 
 Some states – Florida, Alabama and Virginia – have long listed electrocution as an optional execution method. The last US inmate to die by electrocution was Robert Gleason, who chose it over lethal injection and was killed on 16 January, 2013, in Virginia. ||||| OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — With executions in Oklahoma on hold amid a constitutional review of its lethal injection formula, Republican legislators are pushing to make Oklahoma the first state in the nation to allow the use of nitrogen gas to execute death row inmates. 
 
 Two separate bills scheduled for hearings this week in legislative committees would make death by "nitrogen hypoxia" a backup method of execution if the state's current lethal injection process is found to be unconstitutional. 
 
 "You wouldn't need a medical doctor to do it. It's a lot more practical. It's efficient," said Rep. Mike Christian, an Oklahoma City Republican and former Oklahoma Highway patrolman who conducted a hearing last summer on hypoxia, or the depletion of oxygen in the bloodstream. 
 
 The U.S. Supreme Court currently is reviewing Oklahoma's three-drug method in a challenge sparked by a botched lethal injection last spring in which an inmate groaned and writhed on the gurney before a problem was discovered with an intravenous line. The case centers on whether the sedative midazolam properly renders an inmate unconscious before the second and third drugs are administered. Three scheduled lethal injections in Oklahoma have been delayed pending the high court's review. 
 
 Oklahoma officials concede midazolam is not the preferred drug for executions, but death penalty states have been forced to explore alternatives as manufacturers of more effective drugs refuse to sell them for use in lethal injections. 
 
 Tennessee passed a law last year to reinstate the electric chair if it can't get lethal drugs, and Utah is considering bringing back the firing squad. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has urged legislators to consider the creation of a state compounding pharmacy to produce the drugs itself. 
 
 A fiscal analysis of the Oklahoma bill projects it would cost about $300,000 to build a gas chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. A similar bill is pending in the Oklahoma Senate. 
 
 Christian said unlike traditional gas chambers that used drugs like cyanide that caused a buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood, breathing nitrogen would be painless because it leads to hypoxia, a gradual lack of oxygen in the blood, similar to what can happen to pilots at high altitudes. 
 
 Four states currently allow the use of lethal gas — Arizona, California, Missouri, and Wyoming — but all have lethal injection as the primary method, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. No state has ever used nitrogen gas or inert gas hypoxia to execute an inmate. The last U.S. inmate executed in a gas chamber was Walter LaGrand in Arizona in 1999. 
 
 Under current law in Oklahoma, where lethal injection has been used since 1990, if that method is found to be unconstitutional, the state would use the electric chair. The firing squad would be the third option. 
 
 Christian said he is considering amending his bill to eliminate electrocution as a backup method. 
 
 The Rev. Adam Leathers, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said he wished lawmakers would entertain abolishing the death penalty altogether, rather than spending time developing more efficient ways to kill people. 
 
 "It's evidence of what a ludicrous idea this is to begin with," Leathers said. "We're scrambling around trying to figure out humane ways to kill someone. 
 
 "There isn't a right way to do the wrong thing." 
 
 ___ 
 
 House Bill 1879: http://bit.ly/1vetcRn 
 
 Senate Bill 794: http://bit.ly/16LTEeV 
 
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 Follow Sean Murphy at www.twitter.com/apseanmurphy ||||| ST. LOUIS (AP) — With lethal-injection drugs in short supply and new questions looming about their effectiveness, lawmakers in some death penalty states are considering bringing back relics of a more gruesome past: firing squads, electrocutions and gas chambers. 
 
 FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Virginia Department of Corrections shows an electric chair which Virginia provides as an alternative to lethal injection. With lethal-injection drugs in... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this May 13, 2011 file photo is the gas chamber at the former Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City that is now a tourist attraction. With lethal-injection drugs in short supply and... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this June 18, 2010, file photo, the firing squad execution chamber at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah, is shown. With lethal-injection drugs in short supply and new questions looming about... (Associated Press) 
 
 Most states abandoned those execution methods more than a generation ago in a bid to make capital punishment more palatable to the public and to a judicial system worried about inflicting cruel and unusual punishments that violate the Constitution. 
 
 But to some elected officials, the drug shortages and recent legal challenges are beginning to make lethal injection seem too vulnerable to complications. 
 
 "This isn't an attempt to time-warp back into the 1850s or the wild, wild West or anything like that," said Missouri state Rep. Rick Brattin, who this month proposed making firing squads an option for executions. "It's just that I foresee a problem, and I'm trying to come up with a solution that will be the most humane yet most economical for our state." 
 
 Brattin, a Republican, said questions about the injection drugs are sure to end up in court, delaying executions and forcing states to examine alternatives. It's not fair, he said, for relatives of murder victims to wait years, even decades, to see justice served while lawmakers and judges debate execution methods. 
 
 Like Brattin, a Wyoming lawmaker this month offered a bill allowing the firing squad. Missouri's attorney general and a state lawmaker have raised the notion of rebuilding the state's gas chamber. And a Virginia lawmaker wants to make electrocution an option if lethal-injection drugs are not available. 
 
 If adopted, those measures could return states to the more harrowing imagery of previous decades, when inmates were hanged, electrocuted or shot to death by marksmen. 
 
 States began moving to lethal injection in the 1980s in the belief that powerful sedatives and heart-stopping drugs would replace the violent spectacles with a more clinical affair while limiting, if not eliminating, an inmate's pain. 
 
 The total number of U.S. executions has declined — from a peak of 98 in 1999 to 39 last year. Some states have turned away from the death penalty entirely. Many have cases tied up in court. And those that carry on with executions find them increasingly difficult to conduct because of the scarcity of drugs and doubts about how well they work. 
 
 European drug makers have stopped selling the lethal chemicals to prisons because they do not want their products used to kill. 
 
 At least two recent executions are also raising concerns about the drugs' effectiveness. Last week, Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire took 26 minutes to die by injection, gasping repeatedly as he lay on a gurney with his mouth opening and closing. And on Jan. 9, Oklahoma inmate Michael Lee Wilson's final words were, "I feel my whole body burning." 
 
 Missouri threw out its three-drug lethal injection procedure after it could no longer obtain the drugs. State officials altered the method in 2012 to use propofol, which was found in the system of pop star Michael Jackson after he died of an overdose in 2009. 
 
 The anti-death penalty European Union threatened to impose export limits on propofol if it were used in an execution, jeopardizing the supply of a common anesthetic needed by hospitals across the nation. In October, Gov. Jay Nixon stayed the execution of serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin and ordered the Missouri Department of Corrections to find a new drug. 
 
 Days later, the state announced it had switched to a form of pentobarbital made by a compounding pharmacy. Like other states, Missouri has refused to divulge where the drug comes from or who makes it. 
 
 Missouri has carried out two executions using pentobarbital — Franklin in November and Allen Nicklasson in December. Neither inmate showed outward signs of suffering, but the secrecy of the process resulted in a lawsuit and a legislative inquiry. 
 
 Michael Campbell, assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said some lawmakers simply don't believe convicted murderers deserve any mercy. 
 
 "Many of these politicians are trying to tap into a more populist theme that those who do terrible things deserve to have terrible things happen to them," Campbell said. 
 
 Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., cautioned that there could be a backlash. 
 
 "These ideas would jeopardize the death penalty because, I think, the public reaction would be revulsion, at least from many quarters," Dieter said. 
 
 Some states already provide alternatives to lethal injection. Condemned prisoners may choose the electric chair in eight states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. An inmate named Robert Gleason Jr. was the most recent to die by electrocution, in Virginia in January 2013. 
 
 Missouri and Wyoming allow for gas-chamber executions, and Arizona does if the crime occurred before Nov. 23, 1992, and the inmate chooses that option instead of lethal injection. Missouri no longer has a gas chamber, but Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat, and Missouri state Sen. Kurt Schaefer, a Republican, last year suggested possibility rebuilding one. So far, there is no bill to do so. 
 
 Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington state still allow inmates to choose hanging. The last hanging in the U.S. was Billy Bailey in Delaware in 1996. Two prisoners in Washington state have chosen to be hanged since the 1990s — Westley Allan Dodd in 1993 and Charles Rodman Campbell in 1994. 
 
 In recent years, there have been three civilian firing squad executions in the U.S., all in Utah. Gary Gilmore uttered his famous final words, "Let's do it," on Jan. 17, 1977, before his execution, which ended a 10-year unofficial moratorium on the death penalty across the country. 
 
 Convicted killers John Albert Taylor in 1996 and Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010 were also put to death by firing squad. 
 
 Utah is phasing out its use, but the firing squad remains an option there for inmates sentenced prior to May 3, 2004. 
 
 Oklahoma maintains the firing squad as an option, but only if lethal injection and electrocution are deemed unconstitutional. 
 
 In Wyoming, Republican state Sen. Bruce Burns said death by firing squad would be far less expensive than building a gas chamber. Wyoming has only one inmate on death row, 68-year-old convicted killer Dale Wayne Eaton. The state has not executed anyone in 22 years. 
 
 Jackson Miller, a Republican in the Virginia House of Delegates, is sponsoring a bill that would allow for electrocution if lethal injection drugs are not available. 
 
 Miller said he would prefer that the state have easy access to the drugs needed for lethal injections. "But I also believe that the process of the justice system needs to be fulfilled."
– It is one of the craziest custody disputes you could imagine. A city in Oklahoma wants the state to give it back "Old Sparky," an electric chair last used about 50 years ago. McAlester officials want to put it on display as a piece of history. But the state says it's keeping Old Sparky in storage, just in case the relic needs to be fired up again. "That would be possible," a state DOC spokesperson tells the McAlester News-Capital. Old Sparky had its heyday from 1915 to 1966, when it was used to execute 82 inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. It now sits mothballed in a state facility, as the city and the DOC bicker over who owns it. The newspaper has a letter from the DOC to the city in 2010 in which it explains why the state needed to keep the chair. “In the event our lethal injection protocol is ruled unconstitutional, the electric chair must be used by the state as the back-up method of execution." That might have seemed far-fetched at the time, but the state's lethal injection policies are now, in fact, under review after the botched execution of an inmate last month. Tennessee, meanwhile, just brought back its electric chair. All that is understood, says McAlester's mayor, but ... Old Sparky? “That chair has not been used since 1966,” Steve Harrison tells the Guardian. “My assumption would be if it ever got to the point the electric chair was needed again they would start with a new one." (Click to read about how lawmakers elsewhere prefer the return of the firing squad.)