South Carolina put an inmate to death by firing squad Friday night in a 15-year first as demonstrators gathered outside the State Department of Corrections to protest the “barbaric” method.
Brad Sigmon, 67, chose the firing squad for his execution because he feared the lethal injection would make it feel like drowning for 20 minutes and the electric chair would cook him alive, his attorney revealed.
The inmate was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents, David and Gladys Larke, with a baseball bat at their Taylors home in April 2001.
Sigmon bludgeoned the victim’s heads alternately, striking each nine times and almost splitting David’s skull in half.
He then tried to kidnap the girlfriend at gunpoint but she managed to flee and survive a hail of bullets.
On Friday, Sigmon wore a black jumpsuit with a hood over his head as he sat strapped into a chair, breathing heavily, moments before his execution started.
Three riflemen shot him at the same time to the heart from behind a curtain, 15 feet away.
Sigmon gave a breath or two after he was shot and a red stain could be seen spreading across his chest. He was pronounced dead at 6:08 p.m.
Randy Gardner, the brother of the Ronnie Lee Gardner, the last inmate executed by firing squad in the US, called Sigmon’s execution “horrendous” and “very barbaric.”
“I didn’t witness my brother’s execution, but I got to see his body after,” he said.
“I’ve got the autopsy photos of what it looked like, and it’s just mutilated my brother’s body. I think it’s terrible.”
