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." 
 
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 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
– 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.)