If things go as planned, South Carolina will kill Brad Sigmon on Friday by firing squad. It will be the state’s first execution by shooting in its history.
The 67-year-old Sigmon chose a firing squad over the state’s two alternative options: electrocution (the default method) or lethal injection. Sigmon’s lawyer told NBC News that just the fact that Sigmon had to choose how to be killed “is horrifying.”
Sigmon was sentenced to death in 2002 after being convicted of killing his former girlfriend’s parents.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, five states, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah, South Carolina, and Idaho, have firing squads on the books as an execution method.
South Carolina passed a law adding a firing squad to its execution methods in 2021. The protocol calls for a three-person execution team, all with rifles loaded, to fire at a person strapped to a chair about 15 feet away with a hood over his head and a target pinned over his heart.
The last person executed by firing squad in the U.S. was Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010 in Utah.