Brad Sigmon, convicted of murdering the parents of his ex -girlfriend in 2001, was executed in South Carolina by shooting, an unused method in the US for 15 years. He chose this method for fear of the electric chair and lethal injection. Its execution revives the debate on the death penalty.
A man from South Carolina, convicted of killing the parents of his ex -girlfriend with a baseball bat, was executed Friday by a firing squad. He is the first prisoner in the US to die by this method in 15 years, which he chose to consider it a less cruel option than the electric chair or lethal injection.
Three volunteer employees of the prison used rifles to carry out the execution of Brad Sigmon, 67, who was declared dead at 6:08 in the afternoon.
Sigmon killed David and Gladys Larke in his home in Greenville County in 2001 in a failed plan to kidnap his daughter. He told the Police that he planned to take her to a romantic weekend, and then kill her and himself.
Sigmon's lawyers indicated that he chose the firing squad because the electric chair would “cook it alive”, and feared that a lethal injection of Pentobarbital in his veins would send a torrent of liquid and blood to his lungs and drown it.
The details of the South Carolina's lethal injection method remain secret, and Sigmon unsuccessfully requested the State Supreme Court on Thursday to suspend its execution because of that.
On Friday, Sigmon wore a black overall with a hood on his head and a target with a red center on his chest.
The armed employees of the prison were 4.6 meters (15 feet) where he was sitting in the state death chamber, the same distance between the board and the free kick line on a basketball court.
Visible in the same small room was the unused electric chair of the state. The stretcher used to carry out lethal injections had been removed.
The volunteers fired at the same time through openings on a wall. They were not visible for about 12 witnesses in a separate room from the camera by bulletproof glass. Sigmon breathed thoroughly several times during the two minutes that passed since they put the hood until the shots were made.
A doctor entered approximately a minute later and examined Sigmon for 90 seconds before declaring him dead.
Among the witnesses were three relatives of the Larke. Also present were Sigmon's lawyer and his spiritual advisor, a prosecutor's representative, a police investigator and three media members.
Sigmon's lawyer read a final statement he said was “love and exhortation to my Christians to help us end the death penalty.”
Since 1977, only three more prisoners in the United States have been executed by a fuse -squad. All these executions were carried out in Utah, of which the most recent was that of Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010. Another man of that state, Ralph Menzies, could be the following; He is waiting for the result of a hearing in which his lawyers argued that the dementia he suffers makes it inept to be executed.
In South Carolina on Friday, a group of protesters with posters that said “all life is precious” and “execute justice, not people” gathered outside the prison before the execution of Sigmon.
Sigmon's supporters and lawyers asked Republican governor Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life imprisonment. They said he was a model prisoner, to whom the guards had confidence, and that he worked every day to atone for the murders, in addition to committing crimes after succumbing to a serious mental illness.
But McMaster denied the clemency application. No governor has ever switched a death sentence in the state, where 46 prisoners have been executed since the application of the death penalty in the United States resumed in 1976. Seven have died in the electric chair and 39 by lethal injection.