A South Carolina man on death row has chosen death by firing squad as his method of execution, his lawyer said on Friday. If his execution is carried out, he will be the first person killed in that manner in the state’s history.
The man, Brad Sigmon, 67, who was convicted in the 2001 murder of his former girlfriend’s parents in Taylors, S.C., is set to be executed on March 7. Mr. Sigmon — who was ordered to select his method of execution and had to choose between electrocution, lethal injection or firing squad — chose to be fatally shot because of concerns about South Carolina’s lethal injection process, his lawyer, Gerald “Bo” King, told The New York Times.
The State Supreme Court ruled last year that death by firing squad was a legal form of punishment even though it is largely viewed as an archaic form of justice that, according to polls, many Americans believe to be inhumane. The Republican-controlled court said that death by firing squad could not be considered cruel or unusual because prisoners had the option to choose from two other methods.
That decision came after South Carolina passed a law in 2021 that made death by electric chair or firing squad legal options for people on death row. The bill, which made electrocution the default method of execution, was proposed because South Carolina could not procure the drugs needed for lethal injection, which remains the most widely used method in other states.
The only other state that has executed a prisoner by firing squad in modern times was Utah in 2010. The state also used it to execute prisoners in 1996 and 1977.
Along with South Carolina and Utah, just three other states — Mississippi, Oklahoma and Idaho — allow the firing squad as a secondary method of execution, which could be used if a lethal injection drug cannot be obtained. In Idaho, Republicans in the State Senate recently introduced a bill that would make the firing squad the primary method of execution.
Since the South Carolina Supreme Court ruling last year, the state’s Department of Corrections has executed three people, all of whom selected to be killed by lethal injection. But Mr. King said that Mr. Sigmon had chosen a firing squad because of his concerns about South Carolina’s process with the lethal injection drug, pentobarbital.
Mr. King has argued in court that the Department of Corrections has not shared basic facts about the drug that one “would want to know to feel confident that they’ll work as intended,” such as when the drug expires, how it is stored and how it has been tested. South Carolina does not make its lethal injection protocol publicly available.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections said that it had turned over all information about the drug in litigation and that the agency had “sworn to the effectiveness of the drug.”
But Mr. King said that two recently executed inmates in the state had problems with the lethal injection method: Richard B. Moore and Marion Bowman Jr.
Lindsey Vann, the executive director of the nonprofit Justice 360 who represented the men, said that in both instances, a second dose of pentobarbital was administered 10 minutes after the first dose, and that both men did not die until after more than 20 minutes into the procedure. (Mr. Moore had initially chosen in 2022 to be executed by a firing squad, but after the state procured lethal injection drugs he changed his mind.)
“You’re asking people to choose between really gruesome, horrible methods,” Ms. Vann said. “And then on the other hand, you’re not telling them anything about lethal injection, which we conceded, if they do it right, is the most humane, but we don’t know if they’re doing it right.”
Mr. King said that his client felt deeply troubled when he learned that the executions of Mr. Moore and Mr. Bowman — whom he considered friends — had lasted longer than expected, and, in Mr. Moore’s case, had led to pulmonary edema, a painful condition in which lungs fill up with fluid.
Mr. King said Mr. Sigmon felt that “the firing squad is what is left, given what he knows about the electric chair, and what he doesn’t know about lethal injection.” Mr. King said his client felt a “mix of fear and frustration” about his decision.
The South Carolina Department of Corrections said in 2022 that death row inmates who choose the firing squad would be strapped to chairs with hoods over their heads. Three volunteers would then fire rifles at the person’s heart. The agency also said then that it had spent about $53,000 to renovate a death chamber at a prison on the outskirts of Columbia, the state capital.
A majority of Americans favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, polls have found, but one from 2014 showed that 9 percent of Americans viewed execution by firing squad as the most humane method, compared with 65 percent for lethal injection and 4 percent for the electric chair.
The post South Carolina Death Row Inmate Chooses to Be Executed by a Firing Squad appeared first on New York Times.
