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U.S.|South Carolina Executes Inmate by Firing Squad
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/us/south-carolina-firing-squad-execution.html
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The last time such an execution took place was 15 years ago, in Utah. The inmate in South Carolina chose the method because of his concerns about lethal injection, his lawyer said.
March 7, 2025Updated 6:32 p.m. ET
The state of South Carolina executed a prisoner on Friday evening with a firing squad, an extremely rare method that had not been used in the United States since 2010.
The inmate, Brad Sigmon, 67, was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents, David and Gladys Larke, with a baseball bat in 2001.
A judge had ordered Mr. Sigmon to choose from three methods of execution: lethal injection, electrocution or firing squad. His lawyer, Gerald King, said that Mr. Sigmon had chosen to be shot because he had concerns about South Carolina’s lethal injection process.
Mr. Sigmon is the first inmate to be killed in such a manner in the state’s history. Polls show that a majority of Americans favor the death penalty, but many view the firing squad as an archaic form of justice. But as lethal injection drugs have become harder to obtain, and have at times resulted in botched executions, several states have recently legalized firing squads as an execution method.
Utah had previously been the only state to use a firing squad in modern times; it did so in 2010, 1996 and 1977.
Mr. Sigmon was executed in the death chamber at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, S.C., the state capital.
