COLUMBIA: On Friday, South Carolina will carry out the first firing squad execution in the United States in fifteen years, executing a man found guilty of two murders.
Brad Sigmon, 67, said he was afraid that the electric chair or lethal injection would result in a slower and more agonizing death, so he decided to be killed by firing squad.
In 2001, Sigmon was found guilty of using a baseball bat to kill his ex-girlfriend’s parents, William and Gladys Larke, at their Taylors, Texas, home.
On Friday, he was to be strapped into a chair in a steel basin, with a target over his heart and a hood over his head, by executioners. Live ammo was to be fired 15 feet away by three executioners.
