South Carolina to execute prisoner by firing squad

Death chamber in Columbia, S.C., including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left. — Sigmon will be strapped to a metal chair with a hood over his head

(Image credit: South Carolina Department of Corrections / AP)

What happened

South Carolina is scheduled to execute double murderer Brad Sigmon by firing squad Friday evening, barring a last-minute intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court or Gov. Henry McMaster (R). Sigmon, 67, would be the first U.S. death row prisoner killed by firing squad since 2010 and the fourth since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977.

Who said what

South Carolina added firing squad as an execution option in 2021. Sigmon opted to be shot because it seemed the best choice, given his "monstrous" alternatives, said his lawyer Gerald "Bo" King. The state's "ancient electric chair" would "cook him alive," and South Carolina's shield law means he would not know what lethal cocktail would be injected into his veins.

According to the South Carolina Department of Corrections, Sigmon will be strapped to a metal chair (pictured above), a target will be placed over his heart and a hood over his head, and three volunteer prison employees with loaded rifles will shoot him from a partition in the death chamber's wall. It will be "gruesome and barbaric," Randy Gardner, whose brother Ronnie was executed by firing squad in Utah in 2010, told The Associated Press. The "brutality" makes it "probably the most honest of the methods" of state execution, Sigmon's spiritual adviser, Methodist pastor Hilary Taylor, said to South Carolina's The State.

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What next?

"As lethal injection drugs have become harder to obtain, states with the death penalty have looked to expand their execution methods to firing squads and nitrogen gas," USA Today said. Utah has long offered firing squads as an execution option, and Idaho, Mississippi and Oklahoma have also adopted it more recently. South Carolina added the method after having to pause executions for a decade when it ran out of lethal injection chemicals in 2013.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.