The US has conducted its first execution by firing squad in 15 years, with South Carolina prison officials shooting to death Brad Sigmon, 67, on Friday evening, despite widespread concerns about the safety and cruelty of this method.
Sigmon was the oldest person to be executed in the state’s history and his death was part of a series of rapid killings the state has pursued in the last six months as it revives capital punishment. There had been growing calls for clemency, but minutes before Sigmon was killed, the state’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster, announced he would not be intervening.
Sigmon called for Christians to support an end to the death penalty in his last words.
After a 13-year-pause in killings in South Carolina, due to limited supplies to carry out executions, the state now directs men on death row to choose their method of death – electric chair, lethal injection or firing squad.
Sigmon chose to be shot dead out of fear that lethal injection would result in a “prolonged death” following reports that the last three South Carolina men executed by pentobarbital, a sedative, took more than 20 minutes to die and one appeared to suffer a condition akin to drowning and suffocation. They were “three men Brad knew and cared for”, his lawyers said, and he feared a slow injection process or being “burned and cooked alive” by electrocution.
The South Carolina department of corrections (SCDC) firing squad protocols dictated that staff strap Sigmon on a chair in the “death chamber”. At the start of the process, Sigmon was restrained at his ankles, wrists, lap and waist, with a strap on the lower half of his face, Gerald “Bo” King, one of his lawyers, said after the execution.
Before the shooting, Sigmon tried to mouth words to King and his spiritual adviser in the front row, but the restraint on his face made it hard for them to decipher the words, the lawyer said. King attempted to maintain eye contact until staff put a large hood over Sigmon’s head. He had a bull’s eye on his chest and was dressed in black, which is not the typical uniform color for men facing execution and was likely meant to conceal the blood, King said.
Three prison employees armed with rifles shot Sigmon at once, and his arm went tense and started trembling and forcefully straining “as if he was trying to break free from the restraints”, King said. The lawyer said he saw blood spilling out: “The wound on his chest opened very abruptly and violently.” When a doctor approached to check his pulse, the attorney said it appeared that Sigmon’s chest was briefly still moving.
There were three media witnesses in the room, including the Associated Press, who reported that the staff were shooting through openings in a wall and were roughly 15ft away from Sigmon.The AP said it appeared the target was blasted off his chest during the shooting. The staff, who volunteer to be shooters, fired around 6.05pm and Sigmon was declared dead roughly three minutes later.
When SCDC released a photo of the death chamber before the execution, some firearms experts raised concerns about whether the set-up was safe for witnesses and the shooters, citing the possibility for bullets to ricochet. A spokesperson did not respond to questions about safety concerns earlier this week.
Sigmon was convicted of the 2001 murders of his ex-girlfriend’s parents, David and Gladys Larke. He had long admitted his guilt, with his lawyers arguing that the killings stemmed from a childhood of severe abuse and neglect and undiagnosed and untreated mental illness.
His lawyers said he suffered organic brain injuries and manic episodes and was experiencing a psychotic break that probably rendered him incompetent to stand trial. His team argued his trial counsel failed him and the jury “had no idea of how severely compromised his mental health was”.
The US supreme court denied his lawyers’ appeal to stop the execution on Friday afternoon.
Sigmon’s last words, shared by his attorneys, read: “I want my closing statement to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty. An eye for an eye was used as justification to the jury for seeking the death penalty. At that time, I was too ignorant to know how wrong that was.”
He said: “We … now live under the New Testament,” and quoted a Bible verse that says: “You have heard that it has been said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ but I say unto you that you do not resist an evil person. Whosoever shall smite me on the right cheek, turn to him the other one as well.”
“Nowhere does God in the New Testament give man the authority to kill another man,” he continued, quoting the verse, “Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keep with the law.” His statement concluded: “We are now under God’s grace and mercy.”
Rebecca Armstrong, Sigmon’s ex-girlfriend and the daughter of the victims, told USA Today in an interview before the execution that she did not believe in the death penalty, but he “should answer for what he’s done”.
The state argued in court that some arguments raised by his attorneys about his trial counsel and mental health had already been litigated and that it was too late to raise new issues.
Sigmon knew the shooting would “shatter his bones and destroy his heart”, King said in a statement after the execution, but it was “the only choice he had, after the state’s three executions by lethal injection inflicted prolonged and potentially torturous deaths on men he loved like brothers”.
“It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle,” King said, adding that the state had killed 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,” King said, adding: “In 23 years on death row, Brad devoted himself every day to prayer and repentance.”
For his final meal, Sigmon asked for three buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken to be shared with the others on death row, but the request was denied, King said: “Brad’s love for his brothers, his family, his friends, and the men and women who have guarded him is undeniable. It is a shame that South Carolina has not lived up the example that Brad has set for all of us during his final days.”
King, the chief of the capital habeas unit for the fourth circuit, which is part of the federal public defender’s office, has also been raising concerns around the secrecy of South Carolina’s execution methods. Lawmakers in 2023 passed a shield law to keep the identity of lethal injection drug suppliers secret, which allowed officials to restock pentobarbital and resume executions.
Sigmon’s lawyers have said it was “barbaric” to make the men on death row choose among these methods and argued the state was obliged to “disclose some basic facts about the drug’s creation, quality and reliability”. The lawyers have also criticized prison officials for failing to provide information about the “potency, purity and stability” of the drugs, their expiration dates and how they are being tested and stored.
In the execution of Richard Moore in November, autopsy records suggested he required two pentobarbital doses and that his lungs were swollen with fluid, “an excruciating condition known as pulmonary edema”.
A South Carolina judge previously said the firing squad method “constitutes torture” and the person was “likely to be conscious for a minimum of 10 seconds after impact”.
Faith leaders in the state had protested against Sigmon’s execution and supporters had collected thousands of signatures calling for clemency. No South Carolina governor has granted clemency to a defendant facing execution in the modern death penalty era.
