A South Carolina prisoner is set to be executed by firing squad on Friday in the first execution of its kind in more than a decade.
Brad Sigmon, 67, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2002 in the murders of his ex-girlfriend’s parents a year earlier. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his final case appeal in 2021.
Sigmon will be the state’s first death row inmate to be shot to death under a 2021 law, if the execution moves forward as scheduled, after he picked the firing squad over lethal injection or the electric chair.
Here’s what to know about the case.
Brad Sigmon’s case
Sigmon was found guilty of bludgeoning his estranged girlfriend’s parents, David and Gladys Larke, to death with a baseball bat in their home.
The Larkes’ daughter, Rebecca Barbare, broke off her nearly three-year relationship with Sigmon and moved into their home shortly before their deaths. After murdering the couple on April 27, 2001, Sigmon attempted to abduct Barbare, who ultimately escaped.
The jury heard evidence that Sigmon had stalked Barbare and had been smoking crack cocaine the night before the killings and was carrying out a revenge plot because he was asked to leave their property after the end of his tumultuous romantic relationship with Barbare.
Sigmon confessed to the murders, but his attorney has sought clemency to grant him life in prison instead of death.
Execution by firing squad
Capital punishment has been carried out via firing squad in the U.S. just three times since 1976. All were in Utah and had been approved before the state abolished the practice in 2004. The last one took place in 2010.
States have struggled to legally obtain the drugs used to carry out lethal injections in recent years because of ethical objections to capital punishment. Botched executions by lethal injection have also raised concerns about the practice, prompting some states to push other capital punishment methods.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) signed legislation in 2021 allowing death row inmates to pick whether to be executed by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair.
A stay or clemency is possible
The U.S. Supreme Court could still intervene and put the execution on hold. McMaster also could stop the execution with a clemency order.
Both are considered as unlikely due to the evidence in the case and previous unsuccessful appeals. No South Carolina governor has granted clemency since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
Without an 11th-hour reprieve, Sigmon will be executed at the Broad River Correctional Facility in Columbia, S.C. at 6 p.m. Friday. The state recently spent $53,600 to have the death chamber there outfitted with bullet-resistant glass and other renovations to accommodate firing squad executions.
McMaster and a legal team in the state attorney general’s office will be in contact with prison officials leading up to the execution in case of any last-minute legal holds.
The Associated Press reported that the three shooters who carry out the execution will be volunteers from the state Corrections Department.
