South Carolina death row inmate to be executed by firing squad, first in U.S. in 15 years

Undated image of Brad Sigmon, convicted of beating to death his estranged girlfriend’s parents in Greenville County in 2001. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via CNN Newsource)

A man convicted of a double murder is scheduled to be executed in South Carolina Friday night by firing squad - a method that has not been used in the United States in almost 15 years, and never in the state.

Brad Sigmon, 67, chose firing squad over the two other state approved methods of execution, lethal injection or the electric chair.

Sigmon was convicted of the 2001 bludgeoning deaths of his ex-girlfriend’s parents. After their murders Sigmon kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, but she managed to escape.

Attorneys for Sigmon said he faced an “impossible” choice between “barbaric” methods used by the state for execution.

“Unless he elected lethal injection or the firing squad, he would die in South Carolina’s ancient electric chair, which would burn and cook him alive. But the alternative is just as monstrous,” Gerald “Bo” King, one of Sigmon’s attorneys said in a news release after his client told the state his preferred method.

“If he chose lethal injection, he risked the prolonged death suffered by all three of the men South Carolina has executed since September,” King added.

“The only choice that remained is the firing squad. Brad has no illusions about what being shot will do to his body. 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.

If executed, Sigmon will be the oldest person executed by the state, according to King.

Attorneys for Sigmon filed a petition for executive clemency with Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, asking to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment without parole, saying in a news release, “Sigmon committed his crimes and stood trial while in the grip of an undiagnosed, inherited mental illness.”

The governor has received the petition and is reviewing it, but declined to comment beyond that, Brandon Charochak his spokesperson told CNN.

In a Wednesday filing to the US Supreme Court, Sigmon’s attorneys asked the justices for a stay of his execution asking the high court “to consider whether South Carolina’s compressed election timeline and arbitrary denial of information relating to the South Carolina Department of Corrections lethal injection drugs violate Due Process.”

Attorneys for Sigmon say they have tried to obtain more information about the drugs used during lethal injection, but according to them, they have been blocked, “at every turn.”

According to the state department of corrections, Sigmon’s attorneys were provided a copy of the lethal injection protocols under seal. When asked, King said that though they received some information from the department, they have asked for basic facts regarding the expiration date of the drugs, test results and storage conditions.

“None of that information, none of those basic facts, are in the protocols,” he said.

SCOTUS has yet to rule on the petition.

How firing squad executions work

Sigmon’s execution is scheduled to take place at the Broad River Correctional Institution, in Columbia, South Carolina, where all executions in the state are carried out.

Sigmon received his special requested meal Wednesday night, King said. Sigmon was given an individual meal from Kentucky Fried Chicken that included mashed potatoes and green beans.

In 2022, the South Carolina Department of Corrections detailed the room setup and protocols for how a firing squad execution would be carried out. The rifles used by the three-member firing squad will not be visible to witnesses, the department said at the time. All three rifles will be loaded with live rounds.

“The firing squad is thought to cause nearly instant unconsciousness and death from exsanguinating hemorrhage follows shortly thereafter,” Dr. Jonathan Groner, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Surgery at The Ohio State University College of Medicine told CNN Sunday. “The three or four executioners firing large caliber bullets at the heart would instantly stop the blood flow to the brain, which, like a cardiac arrest, causes rapid loss of brain function.”

According to the state protocols, Sigmon will wear his prison-issued uniform and be strapped into a chair within the death chamber.

“A hood will be placed over his head. A small aim point will be placed over his heart by a member of the execution team,” according to the summary of the protocol provided by the DOC.

Each of the three executioners is an employee of the Department of Corrections and volunteered to be part of the team, Chrysti Shain, a spokesperson for the department told CNN.

The firing squad will fire from 15 feet away. Witnesses will see the right-side profile of the condemned inmate, according to the DOC.

Each of the executioners will fire once from their rifles using .308a Winchester TAP Urban bullets. The bullet provides rapid expansion and fragmentation., Shain added.

After the shots, the inmate will be examined by a doctor. Once they are declared dead, a curtain will be drawn and the witnesses escorted out, according to the protocol.

History of execution by firing squad

Over 1,600 executions have taken place in the United States since the 1970s, and the vast majority have been carried out by lethal injection, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI), a nonprofit resource for data on the practice of executions. More than 160 inmates have died by electrocution and 15 by gas, according to the group’s data.

Only three other inmates have been executed by firing squad since 1977, all of them in Utah. The last firing squad execution was Ronnie Gardner, who chose the method in June of 2010.

Utah uses a five-member firing squad, according to the state department of corrections. Armed with .30 caliber rifles loaded with two round, the five shooters, who are not DOC employees, stand 20 to 25 feet away from the inmate. One of the rifles is loaded with blank rounds, the department added.

Five states – Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah allow execution by firing squad, according to DPI.

In Mississippi and Oklahoma, the firing squad option is available “if nitro­gen hypox­ia, lethal injec­tion, and elec­tro­cu­tion are held uncon­sti­tu­tion­al or ‘oth­er­wise unavail­able,’” they state.

Idaho could become the only state that allows firing squad as its primary form of execution, after a bill passed the state legislature this week. The bill heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Brad Little for his signature. Currently, the state allows for a firing squad execution as a backup method if lethal injection drugs are not available.

In 2021, South Carolina passed a law allowing execution by firing squad in the state but named the electric chair the state’s primary means of execution. The law allows inmates the option to instead choose firing squad or lethal injection, if available. The change was made as states around the country hit barriers finding the required drugs for lethal injection which caused many to pause executions at the time.

In South Carolina, the inmate must opt for their method of execution in writing, two weeks before their scheduled death, according to the DPI. In Utah, if a person was sentenced to death before May 3, 2004, they could choose firing squad as an execution option. The method can also be authorized in the state “if lethal-injec­tion drugs are unavail­able,” the group says.

“States are looking for a way to carry out executions that appears to be as peaceful as possible, but it’s not,” Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Policy Project told CNN. “And when they can’t do that, if they’re desperate to carry out executions, they will blow a hole in a prisoner with rifles to carry them out. That takes the death penalty optically to a new level, because capital punishment has always been brutal. But when we resort to visibly brutal methods, that may have a further impact and to accelerate public opinion away from the death penalty.”

South Carolina has 28 other inmates on death row, according to state records.

By Ryan Young, Devon M. Sayers and Michelle Watson, CNN

CNN’s John Fritze, Shawn Nottingham and Jessica Jordan contributed to this report.