COLUMBIA, S.C. – Condemned South Carolina inmate Brad Sigmon has chosen to die subsequent month by a firing squad. He could be the primary U.S. inmate shot to dying in an execution in 15 years.
Sigmon is scheduled to die March 7. On Friday, he turned the primary South Carolina inmate to decide on the state’s new firing squad over deadly injection or the electrical chair.
Solely three inmates within the U.S. have been executed by firing squad since 1976. All have been in Utah, with the final one happening in 2010.
Sigmon, 67, can be strapped to a chair and have a hood positioned over his head and a goal positioned over his coronary heart within the dying chamber. Three volunteers will hearth at him via a small opening about 15 toes (4.6 meters) away.
Attorneys for Sigmon requested to delay his execution date earlier this month as a result of they wished to study if the prisoner in South Carolina’s earlier execution, Marion Bowman, was given two doses of pentobarbital at his execution on Jan. 31 and look over his post-mortem report.
The justices rejected his delay and courtroom data Friday haven’t indicated if Sigmon’s attorneys have obtained Bowman’s post-mortem report but.
Sigmon didn’t choose the electrical chair as a result of it will “burn and prepare dinner him alive,” his legal professional Gerald “Bo” King wrote in a press release.
“However the different is simply as monstrous,” King mentioned. “If he selected deadly injection, he risked the extended dying suffered by all three of the boys South Carolina has executed since September — three males Brad knew and cared for — who remained alive, strapped to a gurney, for greater than twenty minutes.”
Sigmon is aware of it is going to be a violent dying, his lawyer mentioned.
“He doesn’t want to inflict that ache on his household, the witnesses, or the execution group. However, given South Carolina’s pointless and unconscionable secrecy, Brad is selecting as greatest he can,” King mentioned.
Sigmon was convicted within the 2001 baseball bat killings of his ex-girlfriend’s mother and father at their residence in Greenville County. They have been in separate rooms, and Sigmon went forwards and backwards as he beat them to dying, investigators mentioned. He then kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, however she escaped from his automotive. He shot at her as she ran however missed, in keeping with prosecutors.
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