US death row inmate executed by firing squad for the first time in fifteen years
by Henry Moore · LBCBy Henry Moore
Double murderer Brad Sigmon has become the first person to be executed by firing squad in the United States in fifteen years.
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The 67-year-old chose to die by firing squad, telling authorities he feared the electric chair and lethal injection could lead to a slower and more painful death.
Sigmon was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat in Taylors, South Carolina in 2001.
The convicted killer made one final attempt to have his execution postponed on Wednesday, arguing the lack of information South Carolina’s government provided him on the lethal injection process infringed on his rights.
His lawyer Bo King said Sigmon faced "an impossible choice" during the final days of his life.
He said he was forced "to decide whether to die by the firing squad, knowing that the bullets are going to break the bones in his chest and destroy his heart, or risk a 20-minute-long execution strapped to a gurney with your lungs filling with blood and fluid."
This marked only the fourth death by firing squad in the United States since 1976, the previous three all took place in Utah.
Only five states offer the form of killing, which has long been replaced in most states by the electric chair and lethal injection.
The armed prison employees stood 15 feet from where Sigmon sat in the state's death chamber - the same distance as the backboard is from the free-throw line on a basketball court.
In South Carolina on Friday, a group of protesters holding signs with messages such as "All life is precious" and "Execute justice not people" gathered outside the prison before Sigmon's execution.
Supporters and lawyers for Sigmon asked Republican governor Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison.
They said he was a model prisoner trusted by guards and worked every day to atone for the killings and also that he committed the killings after succumbing to severe mental illness.
But Mr McMaster denied the clemency plea. No governor has ever commuted a death sentence in the state, where 46 other prisoners have been executed since the death penalty resumed in the US in 1976.
Seven have died in the electric chair and 39 others by lethal injection.
In the early 2000s, South Carolina was among the busiest death penalty states, carrying out an average of three executions a year. But officials suspended executions for 13 years, in part because they were unable to obtain lethal injection drugs.