Evening Headlines
The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday
Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US
Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US
Brad Sigmon, the first inmate to be executed in the nation by firing squad in 15 years, has died.
The death row inmate was escorted into South Carolina’s Broad River Correctional Institution execution chamber in Columbia shortly before 6 p.m., the time of his scheduled execution.
Three state Department of Corrections employees, who volunteered to execute him, stood behind a wall with a rectangular opening 15 feet away. Once Sigmon was strapped into a chair, executioners placed a hood over his head and a target on his heart.
The warden read the execution warrant and the riflemen fired. Moments later, a doctor confirmed his death. Staff then lowered the curtains.
Ronnie Gardner was the last person to be put to death in the U.S. by firing squad in June 2012 in Utah.
Sigmon chose to die by firing squad in February, weeks after the Corrections Department received his execution order. He had previously challenged officials in court over publicly available information regarding lethal injection executions.
After those efforts failed, he was forced to choose from the state’s three methods: lethal injection, electrocution and firing squad.
In 2021, the state passed a law allowing for firing squad executions and spent about $53,600 on supplies and materials to make renovations to its execution chamber. The construction and design work was done in-house, officials said in a news release.
The firing squad team has been formed since the law’s creation and its members practice once a month.
Sigmon ended up on death row in 2002 for murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents, Gladys and David Larke, in Greenville County. He confessed to the killings and told authorities he struck them in the head with a baseball bat nine times each.
Sigmon had been dating Rebecca Barbare for about three years when their relationship ended in 2001. He told a friend after smoking crack and drinking that he wanted to get revenge on the woman for “leaving him the way she did” and “tie her parents up,” according to court records.
While the woman took her children to school, he entered her parents’ home and beat them to death. Barbare’s father’s skull “was basically almost broken in two,” according to court transcripts.
Sigmon waited for Barbare to return home. When she did, he used her father’s gun to shove her into his car at gunpoint.
The woman later escaped the vehicle, dodging shots fired in her direction. Sigmon fled from the state and was arrested at a campground in Gatlinburg, Tennessee following an 11-day manhunt. Police there extradited him to South Carolina. A grand jury indicted him on two counts of murder and a first-degree burglary charge.
He told officers he had planned to kill both Barbare and himself.
In July, the state supreme court issued a ruling allowing executions to resume following a 13-year moratorium. Additionally, the court deemed firing squad executions a legal form of punishment, despite criticism it’s an inhumane form of justice.
Authorities have since carried out three lethal injection executions.
Neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor Governor Henry McMaster granted Sigmon a reprieve ahead of the execution. His attorneys filed a writ of centori but it was denied hours before he was put to death. The court did not issue a statement on the matter.