Double murder convict from South Carolina becomes first in US to be executed by firing squad in 15 years

Brad Sigmon, a death row inmate in a South Carolina jail, was executed on Friday by a firing squad, a method that has not been used in the US for 15 years. The 67-year-old was shot at by three volunteer prison employees who fired at the convict's chest at the same time.

CREDIT: AP

Execution by firing squad

For the execution, Sigmon was seated, strapped into a metal chair, wore a black jumpsuit, and was hooded. He also had a white target with a red bullseye over his chest for the firing squad, who stood 4.6 metres from where he sat in the state’s death chamber.

Sigmon, on Friday, became the first in 15 years and the fourth inmate in the US to be put to death by the unusual method since 1976.

CREDIT: REUTERS

Sigmon chose execution by firing squad? ?

What makes the execution even more bizarre is the fact that Sigmon chose the method for himself above the usual practices of the electric chair or lethal injection.

Sigmon's lawyers said he chose the firing squad because the electric chair would “cook him alive,” and he feared that a lethal injection of pentobarbital into his veins would send a rush of fluid and blood into his lungs and drown him.

Convicted for murder of?ex-girlfriend’s parents

He was convicted in 2002 for the murder of his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat.

His victims, David and Gladys Larke, were killed in their Greenville County home in 2001 in a botched plot to kidnap their daughter. Sigmon told police he planned to take her for a romantic weekend, then kill her and himself.

CREDIT: X

His lawyers and anti-death sentence campaigners had made several attempts, including a clemency plea to the governor and a last-minute plea in court on Thursday to stop his execution.

'God doesn't give man authority to kill another man'

Ironically, Sigmon's final statements were quoting from the Bible, saying that “nowhere does God in the New Testament give man the authority to kill another man.”

CREDIT: REUTERS

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.”

“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. Why? Because we no longer live under the Old Testament law but now live under the New Testament.”

He concluded his remarks by saying, “We are now under God’s grace and mercy.”

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