First firing squad in 15 years: Inmate to be executed in South Carolina

Columbia: South Carolina is planning to execute a prisoner Friday evening with a firing squad, an extremely rare method that has not been used in the United States since 2010.

The inmate, Brad Sigmon, 67, was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend's parents, David and Gladys Larke, with a baseball bat in 2001.

A judge ordered Sigmon to choose from three methods of execution: lethal injection, electrocution or firing squad. His lawyer, Gerald King, said that Sigmon had chosen to be shot because he had concerns about South Carolina's lethal injection process.

If the execution is carried out, Sigmon will be the first inmate killed in such a manner in the state's history. Polls show that a majority of Americans favor the death penalty, but many view the firing squad as an archaic form of justice. But as lethal injection drugs have become harder to obtain -- and have at times resulted in botched executions -- several states have recently legalized firing squads as an execution method.

Utah is the only state that has used a firing squad in modern times; in addition to 2010, it did so in 1996 and 1977.

Sigmon is to be executed in the death chamber at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina, the state capital, shortly after 6 p.m.

He will be strapped to a metal chair that sits above a catch basin in a corner of the room, according to the state's protocols, and his lawyer will read his final statement. A hood will then be placed over his head. The South Carolina Department of Corrections said that "a small aim point will be placed over his heart by a member of the execution team."

The metal chair is 15 feet from a wall with a rectangular opening. Behind the wall will be a three-person firing squad facing Sigmon through the opening, according to the Department of Corrections.

Because of a shield law passed in 2023, little is known about the firing squad members. According to a spokesperson with the Department of Corrections, they train every month, year-round. A 2022 news release about renovations to the death chamber said that the firing squad consists of Department of Corrections employees who volunteer to take part. They will shoot a type of ammunition often used in police rifles.

After the warden reads the execution order, the firing squad will shoot through the opening at the "aim point" on Sigmon's heart. Witnesses sit in chairs along one wall of the chamber behind bullet-resistant glass. According to the department, witnesses can see the inmate but not the firing squad's rifles through the opening.

Three other states -- Mississippi, Oklahoma and Idaho -- allow the firing squad as a secondary method of execution, to be used only if a lethal injection drug cannot be obtained. In Idaho, the state Senate recently passed a bill that would make death by firing squad the primary method.

The firing squad became legal in South Carolina in 2021, after the state passed a law that allowed death by electric chair or firing squad as options for people on death row. Inmates sued the state, claiming that both methods were cruel, corporal or unusual punishments, which are prohibited by the state constitution.

The South Carolina Supreme Court, which is dominated by Republican appointees, ruled last year that both methods are legal, writing that neither could be considered cruel or unusual because prisoners choose their method.

Since that ruling, the state's Department of Corrections has executed three people, all of whom chose to be killed by lethal injection. But King said that Sigmon had chosen a firing squad because of his concerns about South Carolina's process with the lethal injection drug, pentobarbital.

King has argued in court that the Department of Corrections has not shared basic facts about the drug that one "would want to know to feel confident that they'll work as intended," such as how it is stored, how quickly it expires and how it has been tested. South Carolina does not make its lethal injection protocol public.

A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections said last month that it had turned over all information about the drug in litigation and that the agency had "sworn to the effectiveness" of it.

Lindsey Vann, the executive director of the nonprofit Justice 360, represented two inmates in the state, Richard B. Moore and Marion Bowman Jr., whose recent executions by lethal injection did not go as planned.

Vann said that in both instances, a second dose of pentobarbital was administered 10 minutes after the first, and that in both cases, the men did not die for more than 20 minutes after the procedure began. (Moore initially chose to be executed by a firing squad but changed his mind after the state procured lethal injection drugs.)

King said Sigmon felt that "the firing squad is what is left, given what he knows about the electric chair, and what he doesn't know about lethal injection." King said his client was feeling a "mix of fear and frustration."

"Everything about this barbaric, state-sanctioned atrocity -- from the choice to the method itself -- is abjectly cruel," King said in a statement.

Sigmon's lawyers had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case and issue a stay of execution, but the court denied that request Friday afternoon.

Sigmon has also asked Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, for clemency, though the governor has not granted that to a prisoner on death row since the state restarted executions last year.

Sigmon's lawyers have said that he suffered from an inherited mental illness and childhood brain damage. Those factors, they have argued, contributed to him murdering the Larkes with a baseball bat. After he killed them, Sigmon tried to kidnap his ex-girlfriend.

The victims' grandson, Ricky Sims, told The Greenville News that Sigmon needed to pay for what he had done. "He took away two people who would have done anything for their family," he said.