South Carolina death row inmate to be executed by firing squad, first in US in 15 years
A man convicted of a double murder is scheduled to be executed in South Carolina Friday night by firing squad – a method that has not been used in the United States in almost 15 years, and never in the state.
Brad Sigmon, 67, chose firing squad over the two other state approved methods of execution, lethal injection or the electric chair.
Sigmon was convicted of the 2001 bludgeoning deaths of his ex-girlfriend’s parents. After their murders Sigmon kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, but she managed to escape.
Attorneys for Sigmon said he faced an “impossible” choice between “barbaric” methods used by the state for execution.
“Unless he elected lethal injection or the firing squad, he would die in South Carolina’s ancient electric chair, which would burn and cook him alive. But the alternative is just as monstrous,” Gerald “Bo” King, one of Sigmon’s attorneys said in a news release after his client told the state his preferred method.
“If he chose lethal injection, he risked the prolonged death suffered by all three of the men South Carolina has executed since September,” King added.
“The only choice that remained is the firing squad. Brad has no illusions about what being shot will do to his body. He does not wish to inflict that pain on his family, the witnesses, or the execution team. But, given South Carolina’s unnecessary and unconscionable secrecy, Brad is choosing as best he can,” King said.
If executed, Sigmon will be the oldest person executed by the state, according to King.
Attorneys for Sigmon filed a petition for executive clemency with Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, asking to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment without parole, saying in a news release, “Sigmon committed his crimes and stood trial while in the grip of an undiagnosed, inherited mental illness.”
The governor has received the petition and is reviewing it, but declined to comment beyond that, Brandon Charochak his spokesperson told CNN.
In a Wednesday filing to the US Supreme Court, Sigmon’s attorneys asked the justices for a stay of his execution asking the high court “to consider whether South Carolina’s compressed election timeline and arbitrary denial of information relating to the South Carolina Department of Corrections lethal injection drugs violate Due Process.”
Attorneys for Sigmon say they have tried to obtain more information about the drugs used during lethal injection, but according to them, they have been blocked, “at every turn.”
According to the state department of corrections, Sigmon’s attorneys were provided a copy of the lethal injection protocols under seal. When asked, King said that though they received some information from the department, they have asked for basic facts regarding the expiration date of the drugs, test results and storage conditions.
“None of that information, none of those basic facts, are in the protocols,” he said.
SCOTUS has yet to rule on the petition.
Sigmon’s execution is scheduled to take place at the Broad River Correctional Institution, in Columbia, South Carolina, where all executions in the state are carried out.
Sigmon received his special requested meal Wednesday night, King said. Sigmon was given an individual meal from Kentucky Fried Chicken that included mashed potatoes and green beans.
In 2022, the South Carolina Department of Corrections detailed the room setup and protocols for how a firing squad execution would be carried out. The rifles used by the three-member firing squad will not be visible to witnesses, the department said at the time. All three rifles will be loaded with live rounds.
“The firing squad is thought to cause nearly instant unconsciousness and death from exsanguinating hemorrhage follows shortly thereafter,” Dr. Jonathan Groner, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Surgery at The Ohio State University College of Medicine told CNN Sunday. “The three or four executioners firing large caliber bullets at the heart would instantly stop the blood flow to the brain, which, like a cardiac arrest, causes rapid loss of brain function.”
According to the state protocols, Sigmon will wear his prison-issued uniform and be strapped into a chair within the death chamber.
“A hood will be placed over his head. A small aim point will be placed over his heart by a member of the execution team,” according to the summary of the protocol provided by the DOC.
Each of the three executioners is an employee of the Department of Corrections and volunteered to be part of the team, Chrysti Shain, a spokesperson for the department told CNN.
The firing squad will fire from 15 feet away. Witnesses will see the right-side profile of the condemned inmate, according to the DOC.
Each of the executioners will fire once from their rifles using .308a Winchester TAP Urban bullets. The bullet provides rapid expansion and fragmentation., Shain added.
After the shots, the inmate will be examined by a doctor. Once they are declared dead, a curtain will be drawn and the witnesses escorted out, according to the protocol.
Over 1,600 executions have taken place in the United States since the 1970s, and the vast majority have been carried out by lethal injection, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI), a nonprofit resource for data on the practice of executions. More than 160 inmates have died by electrocution and 15 by gas, according to the group’s data.
Only three other inmates have been executed by firing squad since 1977, all of them in Utah. The last firing squad execution was Ronnie Gardner, who chose the method in June of 2010.
Utah uses a five-member firing squad, according to the state department of corrections. Armed with .30 caliber rifles loaded with two round, the five shooters, who are not DOC employees, stand 20 to 25 feet away from the inmate. One of the rifles is loaded with blank rounds, the department added.
Five states – Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah allow execution by firing squad, according to DPI.
In Mississippi and Oklahoma, the firing squad option is available “if nitrogen hypoxia, lethal injection, and electrocution are held unconstitutional or ‘otherwise unavailable,’” they state.
Idaho could become the only state that allows firing squad as its primary form of execution, after a bill passed the state legislature this week. The bill heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Brad Little for his signature. Currently, the state allows for a firing squad execution as a backup method if lethal injection drugs are not available.
In 2021, South Carolina passed a law allowing execution by firing squad in the state but named the electric chair the state’s primary means of execution. The law allows inmates the option to instead choose firing squad or lethal injection, if available. The change was made as states around the country hit barriers finding the required drugs for lethal injection which caused many to pause executions at the time.
In South Carolina, the inmate must opt for their method of execution in writing, two weeks before their scheduled death, according to the DPI. In Utah, if a person was sentenced to death before May 3, 2004, they could choose firing squad as an execution option. The method can also be authorized in the state “if lethal-injection drugs are unavailable,” the group says.
“States are looking for a way to carry out executions that appears to be as peaceful as possible, but it’s not,” Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Policy Project told CNN. “And when they can’t do that, if they’re desperate to carry out executions, they will blow a hole in a prisoner with rifles to carry them out. That takes the death penalty optically to a new level, because capital punishment has always been brutal. But when we resort to visibly brutal methods, that may have a further impact and to accelerate public opinion away from the death penalty.”
South Carolina has 28 other inmates on death row, according to state records.
CNN’s John Fritze, Shawn Nottingham and Jessica Jordan contributed to this report.
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A firing squad is executing Brad Keith Sigmon in South Carolina today. What to know.
A South Carolina man who beat his ex-girlfriend’s parents to death in a fit of rage is set to become the first inmate to be executed by firing squad in the U.S. since 2010 and the first ever in the state’s modern history on Friday.
Brad Keith Sigmon is expected to be strapped to a specially made chair and have a hood over his head while three volunteer corrections staffers aim loaded rifles at his heart and each fire off a live round, according to the state’s execution protocols.
Sigmon, 67, was convicted of the 2001 murders of Gladys and David Larke, who were beaten to death with a baseball in their small-town home in northwestern South Carolina. Sigmon, who chose the firing squad over lethal injection or the electric chair, has always admitted to killing the Larkes.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am guilty,” Sigmon told jurors at his trial, according to archived coverage in the Greenville News, part of the USA TODAY Network. “I have no excuse for what I did. It’s my fault and I’m not trying to blame nobody else for it, and I’m sorry.”
Sigmon’s ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Armstrong, told USA TODAY − in her first interview in the 24 years since her parents’ murder − that Sigmon’s actions ripped her family apart and that “he should answer for what he’s done,” though she doesn’t believe in the death penalty.
Here’s what you need to know about Sigmon’s execution, how the firing squad will work and what else his victims’ family has to say.
Sigmon is set to be executed just after 6 p.m. ET at the Broad River Correctional Institute in Columbia, South Carolina.
Stories of justice and action across the country: Sign up for USA TODAY’s This is America newsletter.
Sigmon will sit restrained in a metal chair, a hood over his head, in the corner of a room shared by the state’s electric chair, “which can’t be moved,” according to the South Carolina Department of Corrections’ execution protocols provided to USA TODAY.
The firing squad team − three voluntary corrections staff − will stand behind a wall with loaded rifles 15 feet from Sigmon. The wall will have an opening for the weapons.
“A small aim point will be placed over his heart by a member of the execution team,” the department said. “After the warden reads the execution order, the team will fire … After the inmate is declared dead, the curtain will be drawn and witnesses escorted out.”
Witnesses to the execution, which typically involve family members of both the inmate and victim, members of the news media, attorneys and prison staff, “will see the right-side profile of the inmate.”
The department said that bullet-resistant glass has been installed between the death chamber and the witness room.
On April 27, 2001, Sigmon showed up at David and Gladys Larke’s house with a plan that he hatched while doing crack cocaine the night before: He was going to tie them up and kidnap his ex, he told police.
Instead, he beat the couple to death with a baseball bat, hitting each of them nine times, according to police and a medical examiner’s report. Sigmon kidnapped Armstrong in his car but she jumped out of the moving vehicle and was able to escape, though Sigmon shot her once in the foot before his gun ran out of bullets, according to court records.
Sigmon told jurors at his 2002 trial that he had no excuse for what he did, saying that when Armstrong fell out of love with him, it “set me off,” according to the Greenville News.
“I was obsessed with her,” he told jurors. “Did I love her? More than anything else in the world.”
He continued to tell jurors that the death penalty was probably appropriate in his case, saying: “I hate what I did.”
“Do I deserve to die? I probably do,” he said. “I don’t want to die … I just want to live for my family’s sake.”
Jurors in Sigmon’s murder trial also heard from family members of David and Gladys Larke, who were 62 and 59, respectively, when they were killed. Their adult children wept on the witness stand and spoke of their devastation.
“I am who I am because of him (my dad) and my mom,” Darrell Larke said, according to the Greenville News. “He taught me how to fish, how to hunt, how to enjoy life, how to be responsible.”
Armstrong told USA TODAY this week that her parents were simple country folk who had five children and were always looking out for everyone. Her mom loved cooking up a feast for the whole family and her dad “had a good heart” who was quick to forgive and ask forgiveness.
“They were the glue of the family,” Armstrong said, adding that they’ve missed the births of some of their eight grandchildren and five great-grand children since they were murdered. “He took that away.”
She said she does not plan on attending the execution, but her son, Ricky Sims, told the Greenville News that he will be there, wearing the pair of boots that were the last gift his grandparents ever gave him.
“He’s going to pay for what he’s done,” Sims said. “He took away two people who would have done anything for their family. They were the rock of our family … They didn’t deserve it.”
Who were Gladys and David Larke? More about the couple killed by Brad Keith Sigmon
Before the murders, Sigmon was as “a hard worker and a loving brother who worked factory shifts as a teenager to make sure his brothers and sisters could eat,” his attorney, Gerald “Bo” King, said in a statement.
He said that Sigmon became a “tortured” man because of an undiagnosed mental illness that caused “irrational and impulsive episodes,” something he tried to treat with street drugs.
“And that Brad, who was already struggling with organic brain damage and grief from his violent childhood, succumbed to a psychotic break,” King said. “The jury that sentenced him had no idea of how severely compromised his mental health was, or that he was probably incompetent even to stand trial.”
Armstrong said that she and Sigmon were best friends for five years before their romance began and lasted another five years. Armstrong, who had three children when she met Sigmon, said that while he had anger issues and slapped her once, she never would have imagined him capable of the evil he committed.
Since he’s been in prison, King said Sigmon has been “transformed” to a repentant, God-loving man and a “peaceful, trusted presence on Death Row.”
“He serves as an informal chaplain to his fellow prisoners,” King said. “He is a source of strength to his siblings and children. He is also in declining health and poses a danger to no one.”
Five states − South Carolina Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and Idaho − have legalized firing squads as an execution method, most recently Idaho in 2023.
The last inmate in the U.S. to be killed by firing squad was in 2010, when Utah executed Ronnie Lee Gardner for killing a man during a robbery. Both other firing squad executions were in Utah, Gary Mark Gilmore in 1977 and John Albert Taylor in 1996.
Among the witnesses to Gardner’s execution was an Associated Press reporter who said that five volunteer prison staff members fired at him from about 25 feet away with .30-caliber rifles, aiming at a target pinned over his chest as he sat in a chair. One of the rifles had a blank so none of the volunteers knew whether they fired a fatal bullet, AP reported.
King, Sigmon’s attorney, said in a statement that “there is no justice” with Friday’s execution.
“Everything about this barbaric, state-sanctioned atrocity − from the choice to the method itself − is abjectly cruel,” he said. “We should not just be horrified – we should be furious.”
This story has been edited to correct the first reference of the year of the last firing squad execution.
Contributing: Terry Benjamin II, the Greenville News
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Firing squad: What to know about today’s execution in South Carolina
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How South Carolina’s execution of a condemned killer by firing squad will unfold
This undated photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the state’s death chamber in Columbia, S.C., including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP, File)
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — When a South Carolina man who killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat steps into the death row chamber Friday night, it won’t be lethal injection or electrocution that ends his life.
It will be three people holding rifles about 15 feet (4.6 meters) away who will complete his punishment in what will be the United States’ first firing squad execution in 15 years.
Some 46 prisoners have been executed by lethal injection and electrocution in South Carolina since 1985. Brad Sigmon’s execution will be the first by firing squad. Just three inmates — in Utah in 1977, 1996 and 2010 — have faced a firing squad in the U.S. since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Reporters, family members of Sigmon’s victims and his lawyer will view the execution inside the same building used for all executions over the past 35 years, although prison officials say the glass separating the witness room from the death chamber is now bulletproof. Sigmon can give a last statement if he wishes.
Sigmon, 67, is being executed for the 2001 baseball bat killings of his ex-girlfriend’s parents at their home in Greenville County. They were in separate rooms, and Sigmon went back and forth as he beat them to death, investigators said.
He then kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, but she escaped from his car. He shot at her as she ran but missed, according to prosecutors.
In a confession, Sigmon said, “I couldn’t have her. I wasn’t going to let anybody else have her.”
Death row inmates in South Carolina are housed in a building adjacent to the death chamber at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Shortly before his execution, Sigmon will be moved to an individual cell closer to where his life will end.
Just before 6 p.m., the warden will ask Gov. Henry McMaster by phone if he is granting clemency and the Attorney General’s Office if there are any legal blocks to the execution. If both answers are no, Sigmon will enter the death chamber and will be strapped into a metal chair that sits on top of a catch basin.
The curtain to the witness room will open and the right side of Sigmon’s face and body will be toward the window.
His lawyer or a prison official can read his final statement if he wishes. A hood will be placed on his head. A target, positioned by a medical official, will be over his heart.
Fifteen feet (4.6 meters) away will be three state Corrections Department volunteers with rifles. All three will have live ammunition. They will fire from an opening in a wall the witnesses can’t see into.
A doctor will come out, passing by the state’s immobile electric chair, to confirm Sigmon is dead. The witnesses will leave after signing an official document that they witnessed the execution.
When lethal injections take place, a gurney is in the death chamber and behind it is a curtain that blocks the view of the electric chair and the firing squad chair.
Not much is known about the people who will fire the rifles. Prison officials said they have “completed all required training.”
A shield law passed in 2023 in part to keep the name of any supplier of lethal injection drugs secret also keeps secret many other details about the firing squad, from what training it received to the names of anyone on the execution team.
A few details came out in court in 2022 during an unrelated trial that ultimately led the state Supreme Court to rule the firing squad, electric chair and lethal injection were all legal and didn’t violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The state will use .308-caliber Winchester 110-grain TAP Urban ammunition often found in police rifles, said Colie Rushton, the director of Security and Emergency Operations at the Corrections Department.
The round is designed to break apart as soon as it hits something firm, in this case the prisoner’s rib cage. Fragments will spread out and the intent is to destroy as much of the heart as possible.
A medical expert for the state said at the 2022 trial that if the heart is heavily damaged an inmate would lose consciousness almost immediately and likely would not feel pain. The doctor said survivors of gunshots often report first feeling like they were punched and pain only following a few seconds later.
But a doctor testifying for inmates said it would likely take longer for an inmate to lose consciousness and that as anyone who has ever broken a rib knows, breathing becomes extremely painful once the bones in the chest are cracked.
If the aim of the executioners is not true, death could take even longer. Damaged hearts can continue to pump blood.
The information released by the state to the public gives no indication what might happen if an inmate survives the initial shots. At the 2022 trial, witnesses indicated the squad could fire again.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
