Brad Sigmon, a 67 year old Death Row inmate, marked a grim milestone as the first person to be executed by firing squad in 15 years, sharing his last meal – three buckets of KFC alongside mashed potatoes and green beans – with fellow prisoners.
In 2002, Sigmon received the death sentence after confessing to the heinous double homicide of his ex-girlfriend’s parents using a baseball bat, just a week after their daughter ended her relationship with him.
A previous court session disclosed that a crack-influenced Sigmon had told a friend about his intent to “get Becky [Barbare] for leaving him the way she did” and planned on “tie her parents up”. Addressing the jury during his trial nearly 23 years ago, Sigmon admitted, “I am guilty.”
Despite his plea to the Supreme Court to postpone his death scheduled for Wednesday, it was rejected, and his execution proceeded as scheduled shortly after 6 pm EST (11 pm GMT) on Friday.
Sigmon faced his end at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, where shots were fired into the death chamber from three volunteers through an opening. He was pronounced dead at 6:08 pm (11:08 pm GMT), following the shots from rifles carried by the volunteer prison officials.
Donning a black jumpsuit and hood over his head, Sigmon’s attire was marked with a white target featuring a red bullseye on his chest as he faced his terminal punishment, reports The Daily Star
Armed prison staff stood a mere 15 feet (4.6 meters) from where he was seated in the state’s death chamber, a distance equivalent to that between the backboard and the free-throw line on a basketball court. Also visible in the confined space was the state’s unused electric chair, while the gurney used for lethal injections had been moved aside.
The volunteers fired simultaneously through gaps in a wall, unseen by the approximately dozen witnesses in a room separated from the chamber by bullet-resistant glass. When the shots rang out, the target was blown off Sigmon’s chest.
He seemed to take another breath or two with a red stain on his chest, and small amounts of tissue could be seen from the wound during those breaths. His arms briefly tensed when he was shot.
A doctor emerged about a minute later and examined Sigmon for 90 seconds before pronouncing him dead. In 2021, Sigmon narrowly avoided death by “Old Sparky”, the electric chair.
Under state law, Death Row inmates have the right to choose their method of execution. Gerald King, Sigmon’s lawyer, revealed that his client chose the firing squad, fearing the electric chair would “burn and cook him alive.”
King argued that choosing between the two methods was an “impossible choice”, both being equally barbaric.
Sigmon requested a delay for his execution, seeking additional information from prison officials about the state’s lethal injection drug and procedures.
“Mr. Sigmon will be executed in nine days by a method that he chose out of necessity, fear of a torturous death, and without the information needed to assess his alternatives,” wrote Sigmon’s legal team at the time. They claim Sigmon was essentially coerced into opting for an execution by firing squad—a method some might call barbaric—due to his grave fears about the state’s lethal injection techniques potentially causing him to suffer from a slow, painful death by pulmonary oedema.
Sigmon is only the fourth prisoner in the US to have faced a firing squad since 1976, with all previous cases having taken place in Utah, the last being in 2010.
