On Friday, a South Carolina man convicted of a double murder in 2002 was put to death by firing squad, an uncommon execution technique never employed by the state.
According to a South Carolina Department of Corrections spokesman, Brad Sigmon, 67, was declared dead at Broad River Correctional Institution at 6:08 p.m.
He was the state’s oldest executed prisoner.
Chrysti Shain, the spokeswoman, stated that the three-person squad used.308 Winchester rifles to start shooting at 6:05 p.m.
According to media witnesses, Sigmon was strapped into a chair, wearing a black jumpsuit, with what looked like a strap over his head and his ankles shackled.
Before gunfire broke out at 6:05 p.m., they added, he had a hood over his head and a rectangle with a bullseye on his heart.
The witnesses then reported seeing a stain on Sigmon’s chest that was oval in shape.
Before passing away, Sigmon made a final speech in which he expressed his desire for his “closing statement to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty.”
“An eye for an eye was used as justification to the jury for seeking the death penalty,” according to the statement. “At that time, I was too ignorant to know how wrong that was. Why? Because we no longer live under the Old Testament law but now live under the New Testament.
In a statement, Gerald “Bo” King, his attorney, described Sigmon’s passing as “horrifying and violent.”
“He chose the firing squad knowing that three bullets would shatter his bones and destroy his heart,” King said. “But that was the only choice he had, after the state’s three executions by lethal injection inflicted prolonged and potentially torturous deaths on men he loved like brothers.”
Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina stated just minutes before Sigmon passed away that he had examined and rejected his request for pardon. A request for a stay of execution has previously been turned down by the US Supreme Court.
The brother of the last American prisoner to be executed by firing squad was among the about 30 demonstrators outside the prison. Since his brother’s death in Utah in 2010, Randy Gardner, the brother of Ronnie Lee Gardner, has become an ardent opponent of the death sentence.
The firing squad was made lawful in 2021 when Republican McMaster signed a bill requiring condemned prisoners to select between it, lethal injection, or electrocution, the state’s principal method of execution.
Concerns regarding earlier lethal injection executions in South Carolina prompted Sigmon to opt for a firing squad.
According to an autopsy report referenced in court documents filed by the defense last month, one inmate “died with his lungs massively swollen with blood and fluid,” similar to “drowning,” and other inmates needed double the dosage of pentobarbital.
In response, state prosecutors said that because Sigmon opted to die by firing squad, he “waived any argument about lethal injection.”
King claimed that although Sigmon had acknowledged his culpability and “accepted that he deserves punishment,” he had just a cursory understanding of each procedure and had been asked to decide how he would pass away.
After a 13-year break due to the state’s inability to obtain lethal injection medicines, South Carolina resumed executions in September. Officials can publicly conceal information about the state’s current pentobarbital supply source because to a shield law.
During his time in the state Legislature in 2021, former prosecutor Richard “Dick” Harpootlian, who worked on cases involving the death penalty, proposed the firing squad. He claimed that although he “wrestled” with advocating for the technique, he thought it was “less barbaric” than the electric chair.
Given how quickly someone might die after being shot in the heart, Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School who specializes in the death penalty, said that firing squad execution is still one of the “least inhumane” possibilities when compared to other techniques like lethal injection and nitrogen gas.
Its resuscitation recalls earlier eras of American history when firing squads were more prevalent, including the Civil War and the colonial era, when they were employed against deserters.
“Even though [a firing squad] was used in our very first execution in 1608, we’ve never had this many states adopt statutorily the firing squad until now,” Denno stated.
Sigmon was convicted of the beating deaths of Gladys Gwendolyn Larke, 59, and William David Larke, 62, the parents of his ex-girlfriend.
According to the prosecution, Sigmon attacked the couple in their Greenville County home with a baseball bat before kidnapping his ex-girlfriend, who escaped from his vehicle. After a multi-day manhunt, Sigmon was apprehended in Tennessee after escaping.
His defense attorneys said that the jury at his trial was not informed about his history of mental illness, including bipolar disorder, and his “traumatic and abusive childhood,” highlighting allegations of incompetent legal representation, in their appeal to delay his execution.
By concluding that such mitigating information “would not have influenced the jury’s appraisal of Sigmon’s culpability,” the South Carolina Supreme Court once again denied Sigmon’s bid to halt his execution.
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