In this Oct. 13, 1999 file photo, Ricky Bell, then warden at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tenn., gives a tour of the prison's execution chamber. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill into law Thursday, May 22, 2014, allowing the state to electrocute death row inmates in the event prisons are unable to obtain lethal injection drugs, which have become more and more scarce following a European-led boycott of drug sales for executions.NASHVILLE - Tennessee is "ready as needed" to use the electric chair if it can't get the drugs used for lethal injections, the state's top prisons official said Friday.
A corrections spokeswoman added later in the day while the state doesn't have a supply of the drugs, authorities are confident they could acquire some. The chemicals have become scarcer following a European-led boycott of drug sales for executions.
Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill into law Thursday that allows the state to electrocute current and future death row inmates if it can't obtain the drugs. It's the first such law in the country.
"The Legislature felt very strongly we needed to have some sort of backup, in case the drugs for the lethal injection weren't available," Haslam told reporters after a Memorial Day ceremony near the state Capitol.
Correction Commissioner Derrick Schofield said he is comfortable with the state's procedures for ensuring the electric chair would work. This particular chair has been used just once, seven years ago.
"We are ready as needed," Schofield said. "We believe the procedures we have in place to run tests on the equipment will make it work.
"It will work," he said. "We're comfortable."
Tennessee lawmakers overwhelmingly passed the electric chair legislation in April, with the Senate voting 23-3 and the House 68-13 in favor of the bill.
Tennessee is the first state to enact a law to reintroduce the electric chair without giving prisoners an option, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that opposes executions and tracks the issue.
"There are states that allow inmates to choose, but it is a very different matter for a state to impose a method like electrocution," he said. "No other state has gone so far."
Dieter said he expects legal challenges to arise if the state decides to go through with an electrocution, both on the grounds of whether the state could prove that lethal injection drugs were not obtainable and on the grounds of constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
The decision comes as lethal injection is receiving more scrutiny as an execution method, especially after last month's botched execution in Oklahoma.
In that case, convicted killer Clayton Lockett, 38, began writhing, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow after he had supposedly been rendered unconscious by the first of three drugs in the state's new lethal injection combination. The execution was halted, and Lockett died of an apparent heart attack 10 minutes later, authorities said. They later blamed a collapsed vein, not the drugs themselves.
But concerns about lethal injection also have risen at a time when Tennessee and many states -- including Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas -- obtain execution drugs in secret from unidentified compounding pharmacies. Death penalty opponents say the secrecy raises the risk of something going wrong.
Haslam's signing of the electric chair bill Thursday also came on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court issued a rare last-minute stay of an execution for death row inmate Russell Bucklew in St. Louis. The justices directed a lower court to take another look at the case.
The Supreme Court did not specify its reasons, leaving open the question of whether the ruling shows a growing weariness of lethal injection in general or trepidation specifically about Bucklew's medical condition, which affects his veins.
Previous Tennessee law gave inmates who committed crimes before 1999 the choice of whether they wanted to die by electric chair or lethal injection. The last inmate to be electrocuted was Daryl Holton, a Gulf War veteran who killed his three sons and a stepdaughter with a high-powered rifle in a Shelbyville garage in 1997. He requested the electric chair in 2007.
A provision to apply the change to prisoners already sentenced to death has also raised a debate among legal experts.
Nashville criminal defense attorney David Raybin, who helped draft Tennessee's death penalty law nearly 40 years ago, has said lawmakers may change the method of execution but they cannot make that change retroactive. To do so would be unconstitutional, he said.
Tennessee has 74 prisoners on death row. Sidney Porterfield, who at 71 was the oldest inmate on Tennessee's death row, died of natural causes this week. Nine others have died of natural causes since 2000, while one committed suicide. Six inmates have been executed during that time frame, the most recent in 2010.
Billy Ray Irick, who was convicted of murdering a 7-year-old Knoxville girl he was babysitting in 1985, is the next death row inmate scheduled to be executed, on Oct. 7.
Thirty-two states have the death penalty, and all of them rely at least in part on lethal injection. Fewer than a dozen regularly carry out executions, among them Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Virginia and Texas, which leads the country. The federal government also uses lethal injection but rarely carries out executions.
The Supreme Court has never declared a method of execution unconstitutional on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual. It upheld the firing squad in 1879, the electric chair in 1890 and lethal injection in 2008.
The court made it clear over the years that the Eighth Amendment prohibits inflicting pain merely to torture or punish an inmate, drawing a distinction between a method like electrocution and old European practices such as drawing and quartering. The Constitution prohibits "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain," the court said in 1976.
Nonetheless, U.S. states and the federal government have updated execution methods several times in efforts to find more humane ways to put condemned criminals to death.
First used by New York State in 1890, the electric chair was employed throughout the 20th century to execute hundreds and is still an option in eight states. Since 1976, 158 inmates have been executed by electrocution. It was considered humane when it was first introduced but has resulted in many horrific executions over the years.
In 2000, Florida switched from the electric chair to injection after bungled electrocutions raised concerns that the state's death penalty would be declared unconstitutional.
A look at execution methods in the U.S.
Tennessee this week became the first state to enact a law allowing officials to electrocute inmates, regardless of their wishes, in certain circumstances. Six other states allow inmates to opt for the electric chair, while a seventh would move to electrocution if lethal injection were ever banned.
Here is a look at laws regarding the electric chair and other execution methods in the U.S.:
ELECTRIC CHAIR
Seven states allow or would allow electrocution as a secondary option if lethal injection is unavailable or if inmate chooses it:
Alabama: Injection is used unless an inmate requests death by electrocution. Gov. Robert Bentley said on May 5 that he is against switching back to the electric chair whenever the state resumes putting inmates to death.
Arkansas: Injection is used for inmates whose offense occurred on or after July 4, 1983; those who committed the offense before that date may select injection or electrocution.
Florida: Inmates may choose between injection and electrocution. Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Michael Crews said there has been no discussion about changing Florida execution procedures and that the state has a stockpile of drugs that will take care of its needs for about two years.
Kentucky: Injection is used for all inmates convicted after March 31, 1998. Inmates convicted before that time may choose injection or electrocution. If the inmate declines to choose, injection is the method. Kentucky is under a judge's order not to take any steps to carry out an execution.
Oklahoma: Uses electrocution if lethal injection is ever held to be unconstitutional.
South Carolina: Inmates choose between injection and electrocution.
Tennessee: Injection is used for those whose capital offense occurred after Dec. 31, 1998; those who committed the offense before that date may select electrocution by written waiver. Electrocution now is also authorized if lethal injection drugs are not available.
Virginia: Allows prisoners to choose between injection and electrocution. A proposal to allow the Virginia Department of Corrections to use the electric chair as a backup if drugs weren't available passed the Virginia House but died in the Senate during this year's legislative session. Republican Sen. Charles W. "Bill" Carrico, who sponsored the bill, said he thinks Tennessee's decision and a high-profile botched injection in Oklahoma recently bolster the chances of his bill passing next year.
INJECTION
Thirty-five states, the federal government and the U.S. military use injection as the primary method of carrying out an execution. Three of them -- New Mexico, Connecticut, and Maryland -- abolished the death penalty but their laws were not retroactive, leaving inmates on death row in each state.
GAS CHAMBER
Arizona, Missouri and Wyoming allow the state to put inmates to death in the gas chamber if lethal injection drugs are not available.
HANGING
Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington allow the state to hang inmates if lethal injection drugs are not available.
FIRING SQUAD
Oklahoma: Law on the books would allow the state to use a firing squad only if lethal injection and electrocution are found unconstitutional.
Utah: No longer offers the firing squad as an option to inmates, but would allow it only for inmates who chose this method prior to its elimination.
Sources: Death Penalty Information Center, Associated Press reporting.