Brad Sigmon, a South Carolina man, was executed by firing squad on Friday, becoming the first US prisoner in 15 years to be put to death by this method.
Three volunteer prison staff members fired rifles to execute Brad Sigmon, 67, who was later pronounced dead.
Sigmon opted for the firing squad over the electric chair or lethal injection. According to news agency Associated Press, his lawyers argued that he feared the electric chair would “cook him alive” and that a lethal injection of pentobarbital could cause fluid and blood to rush into his lungs, effectively drowning him.
South Carolina keeps the details of its lethal injection method confidential. Sigmon had requested the state Supreme Court to halt his execution on Thursday, arguing against this secrecy, but his appeal was denied.
The firing squad has a long and violent history in the US and worldwide. It has been used to punish mutineers and deserters in military forces, as a form of frontier justice in the American Old West, and as a tool of terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Who Was Brad Sigmon?
- Sigmon killed David and Gladys Larke, his ex-girlfriend’s parents, with a baseball bat in their Greenville County home in 2001.
- He planned to kidnap his ex-girlfriend, Becky Barbare, and then kill both her and himself
- On the night of the murders, he had been smoking crack cocaine and drinking. He told a friend he would “get Becky for leaving him” and “tie her parents up,” according to court records.
- He was sentenced to death in 2002.
- Sigmon was the oldest of the 46 inmates executed in South Carolina since the death penalty resumed in the US in 1976.