Condemned inmate Brad Sigmon today chose to be executed by the state of South Carolina by a firing squad on March 7, 2025. This will be the first time a South Carolina inmate is executed via this method. The state Legislature authorized the use of firing squads for capital punishment in 2021.
Gerald “Bo” King, Chief of the Capital Habeas Unit for the Fourth Circuit in the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Western District of North Carolina, issued the following statement on behalf of Sigmon and his legal team, which includes Josh Kendrick of Kendrick Leonard:
"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.
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. At least one required a second, massive dose of pentobarbital before his heart stopped, and he died with his lungs swollen with fluid.
Brad tried to allay his concerns by asking the Department of Corrections and the courts for basic facts about the drugs that would be injected into his veins. He was denied at every turn.
The only choice that remained is the firing squad. Brad has no illusions about what being shot will do to his body. 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.
Brad’s dilemma is shameful. It makes a mockery of South Carolina’s ‘choice provisions,’ which are intended to ensure that ‘a condemned inmate…will never be subjected to execution by a method he contends is more inhumane than another method that is available.” How can Brad possibly determine the least torturous way to die when the state hides the truth at every step? How could anyone?
Brad’s execution would set grim precedents for South Carolina. He would be the first person that South Carolina has ever killed by a firing squad and the oldest person South Carolina has ever put to death. He would also be only the fourth person to be killed by firing squad in the United States in the last 65 years.
There is no justice here. Everything about this barbaric, state-sanctioned atrocity—from the choice to the method itself—is abjectly cruel. We should not just be horrified – we should be furious.”
