Brad Sigmon, the first person in 15 years to be executed by firing squad in the U.S., has died. His execution took place at South Carolina’s Broad River Correctional Institution shortly before 6 p.m.
Three state Department of Corrections employees, who volunteered for the role, carried out the execution from behind a wall with an opening 15 feet away.
Sigmon was strapped into a chair, hooded, and had a target placed over his heart. After the warden read the execution warrant, the riflemen fired, and a doctor confirmed his death moments later.
Sigmon was sentenced to death in 2002 for murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents, Gladys and David Larke, in Greenville County. He admitted to beating them with a baseball bat after his relationship ended in 2001. Following the killings, he kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, but she later escaped. Sigmon was captured 11 days later at a Tennessee campground and charged with two counts of murder and first-degree burglary.
After a 13-year moratorium on executions, South Carolina’s Supreme Court ruled in July that firing squad executions were legal. The state had passed a law in 2021 allowing the method and spent approximately $53,600 to modify its execution chamber. Sigmon chose to die by firing squad in February after his legal challenges regarding lethal injection procedures failed.
Despite efforts by his attorneys, neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor Governor Henry McMaster intervened to halt his execution.
