In first for state, South Carolina death row inmate elects to die by firing squad

Ted Clifford, The State (Columbia, S.C.) on Feb 21, 2025

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COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina man on death row has opted to die by firing squad. Brad Sigmon, who was sentenced to death for beating his ex-girlfriend’s parents to death with a baseball bat, is the first person in South Carolina to select this method of execution since it was added as an option in 2024.

He is scheduled to be executed on March 7.

At 65, Sigmon would be the oldest person ever put to death in South Carolina and the first person executed by a firing squad.

Death row inmates in South Carolina are given the choice of their method of execution between lethal injection, electric chair and the firing squad. Since executions in the state resumed in September 2024, all three men executed have selected lethal injection.

But Sigmon’s choice comes as concerns have grown about the lethal injection protocol used by South Carolina. The state adopted a protocol of a single drug injection using pentobarbital, a powerful sedative, that causes asphyxiation at high doses.

But the federal government, which also used pentobarbital, is currently reviewing the use of the drug over concerns that it causes and unnecessarily painful death. Legal filings have raised the concern that the drug causes a pulmonary edema, where the lungs fill with fluid, causing the person to feel as if they are drowning.

“The choice Brad faced today was impossible. Unless he elected lethal injection or the firing squad, he would die in South Carolina’s ancient electric chair, which would burn and cook him alive. But the alternative is just as monstrous,” said Gerald “Bo” King, a Federal Public Defender and one of Sigmon’s attorneys.

Sigmon would also only be the fourth person to be executed by firing squad in the United States in the last 65 years.

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