USA - Oklahoma. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted for House Bill 1879 to allow the use of nitrogen gas to execute death-row inmates.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 8-0 for House Bill 1879 to allow the use of nitrogen gas to execute death-row inmates. The legislation, which has already been approved in the House, now moves to the full Senate. The Senate version (SB 794) has already been passed by the Senate and is pending in a House committee. The bill, along with a similar proposal in Oklahoma House, would allow the state to use nitrogen gas — which when inhaled leads to hypoxia, the gradual lack of oxygen in the blood — if lethal injection is ruled unconstitutional. Lethal injection would remain the state's primary execution method, but nitrogen gas would be the state's first backup method ahead of the electric chair, which the state hasn't used since 1966, and a firing squad, which has never been used in an Oklahoma execution. The co-author of the legislation, Rep. Mike Ritze, R-Broken Arrow, didn't immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Tuesday. Ryan Kiesel, executive director of Oklahoma's American Civil Liberties Union chapter, said lawmakers are taking the wrong approach, noting that nitrogen gas isn't used by any other states in executions. "We would be experimenting on the condemned using a process that has been banned in many states for the euthanasia of animals."