USA - Condemned South Carolina inmate Brad Sigmon has chosen to die next month by a firing squad. He would be the first US inmate shot to death in an execution in 15 years.
Sigmon is scheduled to die 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 US 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 metres) 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 January 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.
