U.S. prisoner executed by firing squad — it’s ‘abject­ly cru­el,’ says lawyer

A death row prisoner in South Carolina was executed by firing squad on Friday, making him the first American inmate in 15 years to receive that method of capital punishment.

In 2001, Brad Sigmon, 67, was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents, David and Gladys Larke, with a baseball bat before kidnapping their daughter at gunpoint. She escaped while he fired shots at her.

Sigmon chose to be put to death by firing squad in February (South Carolina state law requires inmates to decide how they will be executed).

Inmates can elect to die by lethal injec­tion, elec­tro­cu­tion, or fir­ing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre.

Inmates sentenced to death by firing squad are strapped to a chair when they enter the execution chamber with a target stuck over their hearts and a bag placed over their head.

Three volunteers standing behind a curtain will then fire specially designed bullets into the inmates chest in unison.

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Sigmon’s lawyer said he chose this method because he’s concerned about lethal injections; recent post-mortem results indicated the use of higher-than-normal dosage amounts and medical complications on previously executed inmates.

On Jan. 31, Mario Bowman was administered dou­ble the typ­i­cal lethal injec­tion dose. Most states use five grams of a combination of chemicals, but Bowman was given 10 grams of pen­to­bar­bi­tal.

His autopsy revealed that he suf­fered from pul­monary ede­ma, a collection of blood and fluid in the lungs.

Similarly, the autop­sy of Richard Moore, who was exe­cut­ed on Nov. 1, 2024, revealed he was admin­is­tered the same dose of pen­to­bar­bi­tal, deliv­ered in two sep­a­rate shots, 11 minutes apart.

Since Sigmon chose his mode on death on Feb. 21, his counsel have requested the South Carolina Supreme Court delay his execution until more information is provided about its lethal injection protocols, and have argued that their client faces an impossible decision to either die a torturous death by lethal injection or a violent one.

The state’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal on Wednesday.

“Brad Sigmon has repeat­ed­ly asked for the basic facts need­ed to deter­mine if South Carolina’s drugs are expired, dilut­ed, or spoiled. He has thus far been denied. He chose the fir­ing squad because he was unwill­ing to risk the pro­longed, tor­tur­ous death that he fears his friends endured. Mr. Bowman’s autop­sy con­firms that those fears were justified,” Gerald “Bo” King, Sigmon’s lawyer said in a statement.

“There is no justice here,” he continued, “everything about this is barbaric, state-sanc­tioned atroc­i­ty — from the choice of the method itself — is abject­ly cru­el. We should not just be hor­ri­fied — we should be furious,” the statement concluded.

Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah are the only other states that allow execution by firing squad, and only three exe­cu­tions have been car­ried out in in the U.S. using this method since 1977 — all of which were in Utah. The last firing squad exe­cu­tion was of Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.