South Carolina carries out first firing squad execution in 15 years
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States are increasingly resorting to controversial execution methods, reigniting ethical and legal battles over the death penalty’s future in America.
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A hearse leaves the prison after the execution of South Carolina inmate Brad Sigmon, on Friday, March 7, 2025, in Columbia, South Carolina. (AP)
A South Carolina man convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat was executed by firing squad on Friday, marking the first use of the method in the United States in 15 years.
Brad Sigmon, 67, was put to death at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, according to South Carolina prison spokesperson Chrysti Shain. The three-person firing squad carried out the execution at 6:05 p.m. (2305 GMT), and a physician pronounced him dead three minutes later.
Journalists who observed the execution from behind bulletproof glass described Sigmon wearing a black jumpsuit with a small red bullseye, made of either paper or cloth, positioned over his heart. He was strapped into a chair in the death chamber.
In a final statement read by his attorney, Gerald "Bo" King, Sigmon expressed a "message of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty."
A hood was then placed over his head, and two minutes later, the firing squad—composed of volunteers from the South Carolina Department of Corrections—fired their rifles through a slit in the wall from a distance of about 15 feet (five meters).
WYFF News 4 journalist Anna Dobbins, who witnessed the execution, described the shots as being fired simultaneously. "It was just one sound," she said.
"His arms flexed," Dobbins added. "There was something in his midsection that moved—I’m not necessarily going to call them breaths, I don’t really know—but there was some movement that went on there for two or three seconds."
She also noted, "It was very fast. I did see a splash of blood when the bullets entered his body. It was not a huge amount, but there was a splash."
Legal challenges and clemency denial
Sigmon, who confessed to the 2001 murders of David and Gladys Larke and admitted his guilt during trial, had appealed to the US Supreme Court for a last-minute stay of execution, but the request was denied. South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster also rejected his plea for clemency.
King, Sigmon’s lawyer, condemned the execution as a "horrifying and violent" act, saying, "It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle."
Sigmon was given a choice between lethal injection, the firing squad, or the electric chair. King argued that his client had been placed in an "impossible" situation, forced to choose the method of his own death.
"The electric chair would burn and cook him alive," he said, while lethal injection risked "the prolonged death suffered by all three of the men South Carolina has executed since September." The firing squad, he added, was "just as monstrous."
Firing squads in US executions
The last execution by firing squad in the US took place in Utah in 2010. The state had previously carried out two others, in 1996 and 1977, the latter of which inspired Norman Mailer’s 1979 book The Executioner’s Song.
Since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the lethal injection has remained the most widely used execution method. However, some states have turned to alternative methods due to difficulties in obtaining execution drugs.
Alabama has recently conducted four executions using nitrogen gas, a process in which the inmate is suffocated by being exposed to pure nitrogen. This method has been condemned by UN experts as "cruel and inhumane."
Currently, five states—Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah—have authorized firing squads as an execution method.
So far in 2025, six executions have been carried out in the United States, following 25 in the previous year. While the death penalty remains legal in 27 states, 23 have abolished it. Three others—California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania—have placed moratoriums on its use.
It is worth noting that US President Donald Trump has been a strong advocate for capital punishment, and on his first day back in office, he called for an expansion of its use "for the vilest crimes."
