Brad Sigmon, a 67-year old South Carolina death row inmate has chosen to be executed by a firing squad, which would make him only the fourth inmate in the U.S. to die by this execution method.
Sigmon who is scheduled to be killed on March 7, informed state officials on Friday that he wishes to die by firing squad rather than by lethal injection or the electric chair, citing, in part, the prolonged suffering the three inmates previously executed in the state had faced when they were killed by lethal injection.
Sigmon was the first South Carolina inmate to choose a firing squad. Only three inmates in the U.S. have been executed by this method since 1976 and all were in Utah, with the last one carried out 15 years ago.
In the death chamber, Sigmon will be strapped to a chair and have a hood over his head and a target over his heart. Three shooters will fire at him through a small opening about 15 feet away.
Lawyers for Sigmon asked to delay his execution date earlier this month because they sought information on whether the last inmate executed by the state, Marion Bowman, was given two doses of the sedative pentobarbital at his execution on Jan. 31. It is unclear if Sigmon’s lawyers have received Bowman’s autopsy report, which they had requested along with additional information about the lethal injection drug.
Justices denied the request for a postponed execution.
Sigmon was convicted in the 2001 baseball bat killings of his ex-girlfriend’s parents at their home in Greenville County. The two were in separate rooms, investigators said, and Sigmon went back and forth between the rooms as he beat them both to death.
After killing the couple, Sigmon kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, but she managed to escape from his car. He shot at her as she ran away but missed.
“I couldn’t have her, I wasn’t going to let anybody else have her,” he said in a confession.
Sigmon’s lawyers now have one last appeal, asking the state Supreme Court to stop his execution to allow a hearing on their claims that his trial lawyers lacked experience and failed by not stopping his statement to the jury or fully bringing his mental illness or rough family life as a child before the jury.
After that final appeal, Sigmon’s last chance to save his life may be asking Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to reduce his sentence to life without parole, but no South Carolina governor has granted clemency in the 49 years since the death penalty resumed.
