Columbia (South Carolina, USA), March 8 (LaPresse) – A South Carolina man convicted of murder was executed by firing squad on Friday. He is the first U.S. prisoner to die by this method in 15 years. Brad Sigmon, 67, was declared dead at 6:08 PM after being shot by three prison employees armed with rifles loaded with live ammunition.
Sigmon killed the parents of his ex-girlfriend with a baseball bat in their Greenville County home in 2001, in a failed plan to kidnap their daughter. He told police he had planned to take her for a romantic weekend, then kill her and himself. Sigmon’s lawyers stated he chose the firing squad because he believed the electric chair would "cook him alive" and feared that a lethal injection of pentobarbital would send a wave of fluid and blood into his lungs and drown him. Sigmon wore a black jumpsuit with a hood over his head and a white target with a red bullseye on his chest.
The armed prison employees were positioned 15 feet from where the condemned man sat, the same distance as the free-throw line to the backboard in basketball. The volunteers fired simultaneously through openings in a wall. They were not visible to the dozen witnesses who were in a separate room with bulletproof glass. Sigmon took several deep breaths during the two minutes from when the hood was placed over his head until the shots were fired. His arms briefly stretched out when the shots were fired, and the target was blown off his chest. A doctor examined Sigmon for 90 seconds about a minute later before declaring him dead.
The firing squad is a method of execution with a long and violent history in the United States and worldwide. Since 1977, only three other prisoners in the U.S. have been executed by firing squad. All were in Utah, the last being Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010. Another Utah man, Ralph Menzies, could be next; he is awaiting the outcome of a hearing where his lawyers argued that his dementia makes him unfit for execution.
On Friday, a group of protesters with signs bearing messages like "Every life is precious" and "Executive justice, not people" gathered outside the prison before Sigmon’s execution.