MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

South Carolina to perform rare firing squad execution

Sigmon chose the firing squad out of fear of more suffering if given a lethal injection or put in the electric chair

Barring any last-minute stay, the US State of South Carolina plans to execute 67-year-old death row inmate Brad Keith Sigmon Friday by firing squad, a method not used in the country in 15 years and which is believed to have been discontinued worldwide for about a decade.

Sigmon's final appeal was turned down earlier this week. As per South Carolina law, he was also given the option to die by lethal injection or in the electric chair but based his choice on insufficient data regarding the drugs used for the intravenous procedure. In addition, he did not want to be “cooked alive.”

The inmate's current legal team also argued that his lawyers in the original 2002 trial did a poor job of trying to save his life after he pleaded guilty by not submitting enough evidence of his mental problems.

Sigmon was convicted of the brutal double murder with a baseball bat of his ex-girlfriend’s parents, David and Gladys Larke, aged 62 and 59 respectively, on April 27, 2001. The crimes took place in Greenville County, South Carolina, just a week after Sigmon’s ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Barbare, ended their three-year relationship.

“If I couldn’t have her, I wasn’t going to let anybody else have her. And I knew it got to the point where I couldn’t have her,” Sigmon confessed after his arrest.

Following the murders, Sigmon attempted to kidnap Barbare when she arrived, shooting her in the foot. She managed to escape by jumping out of his moving car. Sigmon eventually admitted his plan was to kill her, and then take his own life.

In July 2002, Sigmon stood trial for the murders and also burglary, admitting his guilt to the jury, which convicted him on all counts and recommended death, finding aggravating circumstances including multiple murders in one act, murder during a burglary, and physical torture. He was sentenced to death for the murders and 30 years for burglary.

His execution was initially scheduled for Feb. 12, 2021, but was stayed due to South Carolina’s inability to obtain lethal injection drugs. Subsequent execution dates, including May 13, 2022, were also delayed amid legal challenges over execution methods.

South Carolina law later required inmates to choose between lethal injection, electrocution, or firing squad, with electrocution as the default. Sigmon opted for the firing squad on February 21, 2025, citing fears of a torturous death by lethal injection after autopsies from prior executions showed high doses of pentobarbital and fluid accumulation.

Sigmon will be strapped to a chair at Broad River Correctional Institution, hooded, with a target over his heart, and shot by three volunteers from 15 feet away, all with live ammunition, unless clemency is granted by Governor Henry McMaster.

If carried out as planned, it would mark the first US firing squad execution since Ronnie Lee Gardner’s on June 18, 2010, in Utah, and the most recent globally among well-documented cases.

Globally, firing squads have become rare, with many countries abolishing capital punishment or shifting to methods like lethal injection.

Outside the US, the last widely reported firing squad execution was in Indonesia on April 29, 2015, when eight individuals, including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, were put to death for drug trafficking. North Korea reportedly executed people by firing squad as recently as 2021, according to defectors and human rights groups, though no precise date is confirmed. Somalia executed five soldiers by firing squad on September 18, 2017, for murdering a colleague, one of the last documented cases in Africa.