20 February 2017 :

The Oklahoma House passes74-22 House Bill 1679, which would provide alternative ways to carry out death penalty. The measure provides that the available manners of execution are to be lethal drug, nitrogen hypoxia, firing squad, any method not prohibited by the United States Constitution. The manner of carrying out the punishment shall be selected by the Director of the Department of Corrections. Apparently the electric chair has been ruled out. The bill now goes to the Senate. Oklahoma has executed 112 people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the highest per-capita rate in the nation and second overall tally only to Texas, where 537 inmates have been put to death over the last 40 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But executions have been on hold in Oklahoma since a botched execution in 2014 and drug mix-ups during the last 2 scheduled lethal injections in 2015.