Condemned South Carolina killer chooses to be executed by firing squad

This undated image shows Brad Sigmon, who was convicted of beating to death his estranged girlfriend’s parents in Greenville County in 2001. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Condemned South Carolina inmate Brad Sigmon has chosen to die next month by a firing squad. He would be the first U.S. inmate shot to death in an execution in 15 years.

Sigmon is scheduled to die March 7. On Friday, he became the first South Carolina inmate to choose the state’s new firing squad over lethal injection or the electric chair.

Only three inmates in the U.S. have been executed by firing squad since 1976. All were in Utah, with the last one taking place in 2010.

Sigmon, 67, will be strapped to a chair and have a hood placed over his head and a target placed over his heart in the death chamber. Three volunteers will fire at him through a small opening about 15 feet (4.6 meters) away.

Lawyers for Sigmon asked to delay his execution date earlier this month because they wanted to learn if the prisoner in South Carolina’s previous execution, Marion Bowman, was given two doses of pentobarbital at his execution on Jan. 31 and look over his autopsy report.

The justices rejected his delay and court records Friday have not indicated if Sigmon’s lawyers have received Bowman’s autopsy report yet.

Sigmon didn’t pick the electric chair because it would “burn and cook him alive,” his attorney Gerald “Bo” King wrote in a statement.

“But the alternative is just as monstrous,” King said. “If he chose lethal injection, he risked the prolonged death suffered by all three of the men South Carolina has executed since September -- three men Brad knew and cared for -- who remained alive, strapped to a gurney, for more than twenty minutes.”

Sigmon knows it will be a violent death, his lawyer said.

“He does not wish to inflict that pain on his family, the witnesses, or the execution team. But, given South Carolina’s unnecessary and unconscionable secrecy, Brad is choosing as best he can,” King said.

Sigmon was convicted in the 2001 baseball bat killings of his ex-girlfriend’s parents at their home in Greenville County. They were in separate rooms, and Sigmon went back and forth as he beat them to death, investigators said. He then kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, but she escaped from his car. He shot at her as she ran but missed, according to prosecutors.

In a confession, Sigmon said, “I couldn’t have her, I wasn’t going to let anybody else have her.”

Sigmon would be the oldest of the 46 South Carolina inmates who have been executed since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976.

Sigmon’s lawyers have one last appeal, asking the state Supreme Court to stop his execution so a hearing can be held on their arguments that Sigmon’s trial lawyers were inexperienced 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 as they asked for mercy.

Sigmon’s last chance to spare his life may lie with asking Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to reduce his sentence to life without parole.

His lawyers have said he is a model prisoner trusted by guards who works every day to atone for the killings he committed after succumbing to a severe mental illness. They said executing him would only send the message that South Carolina refused to recognize redemption.

No South Carolina governor has granted clemency in the 49 years since the death penalty restarted.

South Carolina spent about $54,000 in 2022 constructing an area for a firing squad in its death chamber. It won’t be far from the electric chair.

Bulletproof glass was installed on the witness window, a chair with a basin under it to catch blood was installed and a wall was built for the shooters to stand behind. Witnesses will see the profile of the inmate, but not the firing squad.

The state Legislature approved the firing squad after prison officials could not obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections because suppliers refused to sell them if they were publically known. A shield law for privacy was passed later, but the firing squad remained on the books.

Sigmon didn’t choose lethal injection because witnesses to the three previous executions since the state moved to using a massive dose of pentobarbital have said that even though the condemned prisoners appeared to stop breathing and moving in a few minutes, they were not declared dead for at least 20 minutes.

The autopsy report has been released for only one of the executions: Richard Moore, who prison officials say was given two large doses of the sedative pentobarbital 11 minutes apart on Nov. 1.

Freddie Owens, the first inmate killed with the new protocols, refused an autopsy for religious reasons.

Lawyers for Sigmon said Moore’s autopsy showed unusual amounts of fluid in his lungs and an expert suggested he might have felt like he was drowning

Attorneys for the state said the fluid is not unusual for executions by a large dose of pentobarbital and pointed out that witnesses said the inmates killed in South Carolina so far have only been conscious and breathing for about a minute after the executions begin.

Jeffrey Collins, The Associated Press