From: bigmongo@biteme.com   
      
   https://apnews.com/article/firing-squad-execution-south-carolina-brad-   
   sigmon-efbbf7415a4b4a9fd56023c17a7afc17   
      
   Condemned South Carolina killer chooses to be executed by firing squad   
      
      
   By  JEFFREY COLLINS   
   Updated 5:15 PM EST, February 21, 2025   
   COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Condemned South Carolina inmate Brad Sigmon has   
   chosen to die next month by a firing squad, a method of execution that has   
   not been used in the U.S. in 15 years.   
      
   Sigmon is scheduled to die on March 7. On Friday, he became the first   
   South Carolina inmate to choose the state’s new firing squad over lethal   
   injection or the electric chair.   
      
   Only three inmates in the U.S. have been executed by firing squad since   
   1976. All were in Utah, with the last one taking place in 2010.   
      
   Sigmon, 67, will be strapped to a chair and have a hood placed over his   
   head and a target placed over his heart in the death chamber. Three   
   volunteers will fire at him through a small opening about 15 feet (4.6   
   meters) away.   
      
   Lawyers for Sigmon asked to delay his execution date earlier this month   
   because they wanted to learn if the prisoner in South Carolina’s previous   
   execution, Marion Bowman, was given two doses of pentobarbital at his   
   execution on Jan. 31 and look over his autopsy report.   
      
   The justices rejected his delay and court records Friday have not   
   indicated if Sigmon’s lawyers have received Bowman’s autopsy report yet.   
      
   Sigmon didn’t pick the electric chair because it would “burn and cook him   
   alive,” his attorney Gerald “Bo” King wrote in a statement.   
      
   “But the alternative is just as monstrous,” King said. “If he chose   
   lethal   
   injection, he risked the prolonged death suffered by all three of the men   
   South Carolina has executed since September — three men Brad knew and   
   cared for — who remained alive, strapped to a gurney, for more than twenty   
   minutes.”   
      
      
   Sigmon said South Carolina keeping so much secret about how it conducts   
   lethal injections led him to decide on what he knows will be a violent   
   death, his lawyer said.   
      
   “He does not wish to inflict that pain on his family, the witnesses, or   
   the execution team. But, given South Carolina’s unnecessary and   
   unconscionable secrecy, Brad is choosing as best he can,” King said.   
      
   Sigmon was convicted in the 2001 baseball bat killings of his ex-   
   girlfriend’s parents at their home in Greenville County. They were in   
   separate rooms, and Sigmon went back and forth as he beat them to death,   
   investigators said. He then kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, but   
   she escaped from his car. He shot at her as she ran but missed, according   
   to prosecutors.   
      
   In a confession, Sigmon said, “I couldn’t have her, I wasn’t going to let   
   anybody else have her.”   
      
   Sigmon would be the oldest of the 46 South Carolina inmates who have been   
   executed since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976.   
      
   Sigmon’s lawyers have one last appeal, asking the state Supreme Court to   
   stop his execution so a hearing can be held on their arguments that   
   Sigmon’s trial lawyers were inexperienced and failed by not stopping his   
   statement to the jury or fully bringing his mental illness or rough family   
   life as a child before the jury as they asked for mercy.   
      
   Sigmon’s last chance to spare his life may lie with asking Republican Gov.   
   Henry McMaster to reduce his sentence to life without parole.   
      
   His lawyers have said he is a model prisoner trusted by guards who works   
   every day to atone for the killings he committed after succumbing to a   
   severe mental illness. They said executing him would only send the message   
   that South Carolina refused to recognize redemption.   
      
   No South Carolina governor has granted clemency in the 49 years since the   
   death penalty restarted.   
      
   South Carolina spent about $54,000 in 2022 constructing an area for a   
   firing squad in its death chamber. It won’t be far from the electric   
   chair.   
      
   Bulletproof glass was installed on the witness window, a chair with a   
   basin under it to catch blood is in place and a wall was built for the   
   shooters to stand behind. Witnesses will see the inmate’s profile but not   
   the firing squad.   
      
   The state Legislature approved the firing squad after prison officials   
   could not obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections because suppliers   
   refused to sell them if they were publicly known. A shield law for privacy   
   was passed later, but the firing squad remained on the books.   
      
   Sigmon’s lawyers said he chose against lethal injection because of the   
   circumstances of the three previous executions since the state moved to   
   using a massive dose of pentobarbital. While witnesses said the three   
   condemned prisoners appeared to stop breathing and moving in a few   
   minutes, they were not declared dead for at least 20 minutes.   
      
   The autopsy report has been released for only one of the executions:   
   Richard Moore, who prison officials say was given two large doses of the   
   sedative pentobarbital 11 minutes apart on Nov. 1.   
      
   Freddie Owens, the first inmate killed with the new protocols, refused an   
   autopsy for religious reasons.   
      
   Lawyers for Sigmon said Moore’s autopsy showed unusual amounts of fluid in   
   his lungs and an expert suggested he might have felt like he was drowning   
      
   Attorneys for the state said the fluid is not unusual for executions by a   
   large dose of pentobarbital and pointed out that witnesses said the   
   inmates killed in South Carolina so far have only been conscious and   
   breathing for about a minute after the executions begin.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)