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USA - South Carolina. Brad Sigmon, 67, White, was executed
March 7, 2025: March 7, 2025 - South Carolina. Brad Sigmon, 67, White, was executed
1st Firing Squad Execution in the last 15 years
Brad Sigmon was shot to death just after 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) on Friday by three state corrections department volunteers firing rifles at his chest with specially designed bullets.
Sigmon was sentenced to death in 2002 for the April 27, 2001 double murder of his ex-girlfriend's parents, William David and Gladys Larke, aged 62 and 59 respectively, and the kidnapping of their daughter, his ex-girlfriend, at gunpoint: Rebecca Barbare. She managed to escape as he shot at her.
He had requested death by firing squad over the other two state-approved methods of execution: electric chair and lethal injection.
Chrysti Shain, of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, said Sigmon was pronounced dead by a doctor at 18:08.
Three members of the Larke family were present to witness his death, she said, as well as Sigmon's spiritual adviser.
Sigmon was strapped to a chair, which had a basin underneath to catch blood, witnesses said.
He told witnesses he wanted his final statement "to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty".
"An eye for an eye was used as justification to the jury for seeking the death penalty," he added.
"At that time, I was too ignorant to know how wrong that was. Why? Because we no longer live under the Old Testament law but now live under the New Testament."
After his final statement, a hood was placed over his head.
A curtain that concealed three volunteers opened at 18:01. At 18:05, the trio fired from 15ft (4.6m) away without any countdown.
Jeffrey Collins, a reporter for the Associated Press news agency, said at a news conference that Sigmon had a red bullseye target placed over his heart.
When he was shot, his chest rose and fell several times, the reporter added.
A doctor performed an exam that took about 90 seconds, before declaring him dead.
The .308 Winchester Tap Urban bullets used are designed to break apart on impact and cause maximum damage. Medical experts have debated the amount of pain they may cause.
Anna Dobbins, a reporter for WHFF-TV, added that Sigmon had worn a black jump suit but his bare arms had "flexed" when he was shot.
"I did see a splash of blood when the bullets entered his body," she told the news conference.
All the shots were fired simultaneously, she said, and witnesses were unable to see the guns.
Prison guards also offered witnesses ear plugs to protect their ears from the sound of the shots, added a reporter for the Post and Courier newspaper.
Counselling services are being offered to any prison staff who were traumatised by the execution, said Ms Shain.
Sigmon's lawyer, Bo King, had been hoping for a last-minute stay of execution by the South Carolina governor and accused the state of withholding information about the lethal injection process.
"Brad only wanted assurances that these drugs were not expired, or diluted, or spoiled—what any of us would want to know about the medication we take, or the food we eat, much less the means of our death," he said in a statement after his death.
"It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle."
King said his client had been suffering from mental illness, and that the friendships he formed in prison were proof he had been rehabilitated.
"Brad is someone who, for his last meal, asked to get three buckets of original recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken so he could share with the guys that he's incarcerated with on death row," he told a WYFF-TV earlier on Friday.
"With his last meal, he wanted to share something special with them," he said, later telling reporters that the request to share had been denied.
Officials later confirmed his last meal as four pieces of fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes with gravy, biscuits, cheesecake and sweet tea. The meal was served on Wednesday evening.
Since 1977 only three people had died by firing squad, all three of them in the state of Utah. The last to die had been Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.
Ahead of Sigmon's execution, anti-death penalty protesters held a rally outside the jail in the city of Columbia.
They held signs saying "all life is precious" and "thou shalt not kill".
The state allows witnesses to observe the death from behind bulletproof glass, but the executioners are hidden from view to protect their identities.
South Carolina passed a law in 2023 requiring that the identities of the execution team members remain secret.
Sigmon becomes the 2nd person executed this year in South Carolina, the 47th since the state resumed executions in 1985, the 6th in the U.S. in 2025, and the No. 1613 since the U.S. resumed executions in 1977.
On the Sigmon case see also HoC 04/02/2021, 16/06/2021, 26/04/2022.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8j0me0jzwko (Source: BBC, 07/03/2025)
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