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. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By David K. Li and Doha Madani 
 
 A double-murderer was put to death in the electric chair on Thursday night, as the state of Tennessee made good on the killer’s grim request to perish by electrocution and not lethal injection. 
 
 Edmund Zagorski, 63, was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. CT (8:26 p.m. ET) at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Corrections said at a press conference. 
 
 He was the nation's first electric chair death in five years. 
 
 A slew of late appeals by Zagorski’s legal team — claiming previous ineffective counsel and that the electric chair was cruel and unusual punishment — were turned aside by a federal appears court and the U.S. Supreme Court. 
 
 Zagorski's final words were "Let's Rock," according to media witnesses to the execution, including a reporter with NBC affiliate WSMV. Witnesses said at a press conference following the electrocution that Zagorski was grinning at times but grimaced just before officials fired up the electricity. 
 
 He had dined on a final meal of pickled pig knuckles and tails, according to prison officials. 
 
 While Tennessee normally puts inmates to death with lethal injection, Zagorski wants to die in the electric chair, claiming that 1,750 volts will be less painful than receiving a deadly cocktail of IV drugs. 
 
 State law allows condemned prisoners, who committed their crimes before January 1999, to opt for electrocution. 
 
 Death row inmate Edmund Zagorski, 63. Jose Romero / Tennessee Department of Corrections / AFP - Getty Images 
 
 Zagorski, who murdered two men in 1983 in a drug deal gone wrong, had been set to die by lethal injection on Oct. 11 and the killer opted for electrocution. State authorities originally denied Zagorski’s preference for electrocution, saying his request came too late. 
 
 But hours before the scheduled execution, Gov. Bill Haslam ordered a 10-day delay so the state could prepare the electric chair for Zagroski’s use. 
 
 The last time Tennessee used the chair was in 2007 when the state executed 45-year-old Daryl Keith Holton, a Gulf War veteran who murdered his four children. 
 
 Gov. Haslam said this week he’s confident the electric chair will function properly on Thursday night. 
 
 “I have a great deal of confidence in our Department of Correction folks,” he said. “We’ve spoken with them regularly and they’ve assured us (the chair is ready).” 
 
 Zagorski was moved to a special holding cell near the death chamber on Tuesday morning, ahead of Thursday night’s execution. 
 
 That’s when an execution team sat Zagorski in the electric chair and wrap sponges soaked in saltwater around his ankles and head, to better conduct electricity. 
 
 In legal filings, Zagorki said death at the end of a syringe probably lasts “10-18 minutes... in utter terror and agony." He claimed electrocution would be a shorter, less painful experience. 
 
 Zagorski was sentenced to death for the 1983 slayings of John Dotson and Jimmy Porter — two 35-year-old men who were planning to buy 100 pounds of marijuana from him. 
 
 Zagorski was the 1,485th execution carried out in the United States since capital punishment was re-started in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington D.C. 
 
 But he was only the eighth death penalty carried out in the Volunteer State since 1976, although there has already been one this year. William “Billy” Ray Irick was put to death on Aug. 9 for the 1985 rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl. 
 
 Zagorski was the 159th person put to death in the electric chair in the United States since 1976. But the most recent electrocution was in 2013, when Virginia executed Robert Charles Gleason Jr., who murdered two fellow inmates.
– 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.)