South Carolina Executes Inmate by Firing Squad, Marking First U.S. Use in 15 Years

By Olufemi Olatunji

A South Carolina man has been executed by firing squad, becoming the first U.S. prisoner in 15 years to die by this method. A South Carolina man who killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat was executed by firing squad on Friday, marking the first time this method has been used in the U.S. in 15 years. He preferred this method over the electric chair or lethal injection.

Three volunteer prison employees used rifles to carry out the execution of Brad Sigmon, 67, who was pronounced dead at 6:08 p.m. Sigmon murdered David and Gladys Larke in their Greenville County home in 2001 during a failed attempt to kidnap their daughter. He told police he planned to take her for a romantic weekend, then kill her and himself.

Sigmon’s lawyers stated that he chose the firing squad because the electric chair would “cook him alive,” and he feared that a lethal injection of pentobarbital would cause fluid and blood to flood his lungs, leading to drowning. The details of South Carolina’s lethal injection method are confidential, and Sigmon unsuccessfully petitioned the state Supreme Court to delay his execution due to this secrecy.

ADVERTISEMENT

On the day of his execution, Sigmon wore a black jumpsuit with a hood over his head and a white target with a red bullseye on his chest. The armed prison employees stood 15 feet (4.6 meters) from where he sat in the state’s death chamber—the same distance as the free-throw line on a basketball court. Visible in the same small room was the state’s unused electric chair, while the gurney used for lethal injections had been removed.

The volunteers fired simultaneously through openings in a wall, causing a loud, jarring bang that made witnesses flinch. Sigmon made several heavy breaths during the two minutes that elapsed from when the hood was placed to the shots being fired. His arms briefly tensed when he was shot, and the target was blasted off his chest. He appeared to take another breath or two with a red stain on his chest, and small amounts of tissue could be seen from the wound during those breaths.

A doctor examined Sigmon about a minute later and declared him dead after a 90-second examination. Witnesses included three family members of the Larkes, Sigmon’s attorney and spiritual advisor, a representative from the prosecuting solicitor’s office, a sheriff’s investigator, and three members of the news media.

Sigmon’s lawyer read a closing statement that he said was “one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty.” Prison spokeswoman Chrysti Shain said Sigmon’s last meal was four pieces of fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes with gravy, biscuits, cheesecake, and sweet tea.

The firing squad is an execution method with a long and violent history in the U.S. and around the world. Since 1977, only three other prisoners in the U.S. have been executed by firing squad, all in Utah, most recently Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.

In South Carolina on Friday, a group of protesters gathered outside the prison before Sigmon’s execution, holding signs with messages such as “All life is precious” and “Execute justice not people.” Supporters and lawyers for Sigmon asked Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison, citing his transformation into a model prisoner who worked to atone for his crimes. However, McMaster denied the clemency plea. No governor has ever commuted a death sentence in the state, where 46 other prisoners have been executed since the death penalty resumed in the U.S. in 1976.

Gerald “Bo” King, chief of the capital habeas unit in the federal public defender’s office, stated that Sigmon used his final statement to call on his fellow people of faith to end the death penalty and spare the lives of the 28 men still on South Carolina’s death row. “It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle,” King said in a statement. “But South Carolina has ended the life of a man who has devoted himself to his faith, and to ministry and service to all around him. Brad admitted his guilt at trial and shared his deep grief for his crimes with his jury and, in the years since, with everyone who knew him.”

In the early 2000s, South Carolina was among the busiest death penalty states, carrying out an average of three executions a year. However, officials suspended executions for 13 years, partly due to difficulties in obtaining lethal injection drugs. The state Supreme Court cleared the way to resume executions in July. Going forward, the court will allow an execution every five weeks. South Carolina now has 28 inmates on its death row, including two who have exhausted their appeals and are awaiting execution, likely this spring. Just one man has been added to death row in the past decade. Before executions were paused, more than 60 people faced death sentences; many have had their sentences reduced to life or died in prison.