Columbia, SC (AP)-A man from South Carolina who killed the parents of his ex-girlfriend with a baseball bat, was executed on Friday by Squad Fire Squad, the first American prisoner in 15 years to die with that method, which he saw as the preference above the electric chair or deadly injection.
Three volunteers used guns to kill the performance of Brad Sigmon, 67, who was pronounced dead at 6:08 PM
Sigmon killed David and Gladys Larke in their house in Greenville County in 2001 in a failed conspiracy to kidnap their daughter. He told the police that he intended to take her for a romantic weekend and to kill her and herself.
Sigmon’s lawyers said he had chosen the shooting team because the electric chair would “cook it alive” and he feared that a deadly injection of Pentobarbital would be in his veins Send a hurry of liquid and blood in his lungs and drowned him.
The details of the deadly injection method of South Carolina are secrecy In South Carolina, and Sigmon, the State Supreme Court asked in vain to pause his execution on Thursday.
On Friday, Sigmon wore a black jumpsuit with a hood over his head and a white target with a red Bullseye over his chest.
The armed prisoners Stood 15 feet (4.6 meters) from where he sat in the death room of the state when the backboard of the free saucepin is on a basketball court. Visible in the same small room was the unused electric chair of the state. The stretcher that was used to carry out deadly injections were rolled away.
The volunteers all shot through openings in a wall. They were not visible for about a dozen witnesses in a room separated from the room by bullet -resistant glass. Sigmon got several heavy breaths during the two minutes that passed when the hood was placed on the shots that were fired.
The shots, which sounded as if they were being fired at the same time, made a loud, shocking bang that caused witnesses to shrink. His arms tend to be short when he was shot and the target was beaten off his chest. He seemed to give another or two breathing with a red spot on his chest, and small amounts of tissue could be seen during those breaths of the wound.
A doctor came out about a minute later and examined Sigmon for 90 seconds before he declared him dead.
Witnesses were three family members of the lark. Also present were Sigmon’s lawyer and spiritual adviser, a representative of the public prosecutor, a researcher of a sheriff and three members of the news media.
Sigmon’s lawyer read a final statement that he said was “one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty.”
The spokeswoman for the Chrysti Shain prison said that Sigmon’s last meal was four pieces of baked chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes with gravy, cookies, cheesecake and sweet tea.
The shooting team is an implementation method with a Long and violent history In the US and the whole world. Death in a hail of bullets was used to punish mutines and desertie in armies, as a lines in America in ancient west of America and as a tool for terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Since 1977, only three other prisoners in the US have been executed by shooting Squad. All were in Utah, most recently Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010. Another Utah man, Ralph Menzies, could be the following; He is waiting for the result of a hearing in which his lawyers claimed that his dementia makes him unsuitable for execution.
In South Carolina on Friday, a group of demonstrators gathered with messages such as “All Life is expensive” and “Justice Not People” Executed Justice “collected outside prison before the execution of Sigmon.
Sigmon supporters and lawyers asked the Republican government Henry McMaster to commit his sentence for life in prison. They said he was a model prisoner who was familiar with guards and worked every day to pay the murders and also that he committed the murders after collapsing for serious psychological disorders.
But McMaster denied the Clementia plea. No governor has ever converted a death sentence in the state, where 46 other prisoners have been executed since the death penalty was resumed in the US in 1976. Seven died in the electric chairman and 39 others through fatal injection.
Gerald “Bo” King, head of the capital of the capital in the office of the federal public defender, said that Sigmon “used his last explanation to call his fellow belief to end the death penalty and save the lives of the 28 men who were still locked up in the death cell of South Carolina.”
“It is incomprehensible that in 2025 South Carolina would execute one of his civilians 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 service and service to everywhere around him. Brad gave his blame during the trial and shared his deep sorrow for his crimes with his jury and, in the years since then, with everyone who knew him. “
In the early 2000s, South Carolina was one of the busiest death penalty, with an average of three executions per year. But civil servants Executed executions for 13 yearsPartly because they could not obtain deadly injecting medicines.
The State Supreme Court the road To resume them in July. Freddie Owens was the first to be brought to deathOn September 20, after McMaster refused him Clementia. Richard Moore was performed on November 1 and Marion Bowman Jr. on January 31.
In the future, the court allows an execution every five weeks.
South Carolina now has 28 prisoners In the death cell, including two who have exhausted their calls and are awaiting implementation, probably this spring. Only one man has been added to the death cell in the past decade.
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Before the executions were paused, more than 60 people were confronted with death sentences. Many of them have reduced their sights to life or died in prison.
Associated Press writer Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, contributed.