South Carolina’s execution chamber. (Provided/SC Department of Corrections)
COLUMBIA — Death row inmate Brad Sigmon has chosen to die by firing squad, which would be a first in South Carolina, his attorneys said Friday.
Sigmon is scheduled to die March 7. He was sentenced to death in 2002 for beating his ex-girlfriend’s parents to death with a baseball bat at their Greenville County home, then attempting to kidnap their daughter.
His death by firing squad would be only the fourth in the nation, his attorneys said in a statement.
The other three all occurred in Utah, most recently in 2010.
“Everything about this barbaric, state-sanctioned atrocity — from the choice to the method itself — is abjectly cruel,” attorney Bo King said in a statement. “We should not just be horrified – we should be furious.”
Since the state resumed executions in September, all three death row inmates have died by lethal injection.
The firing squad was added as an option in 2022.
At the time, the state was unable to carry out executions because its fatal drug supply had expired, and Department of Corrections was unable to restock. The same law reverted to electrocution as the default method if the condemned inmate declines to choose by the two-week deadline.
Inmate Richard Moore was technically the first to pick firing squad in 2022. But Moore, who was part of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the method, wrote on his election form that his choice was only because he didn’t want to face the electric chair.
The state Supreme Court ruled last summer that both firing squad and electric chair are constitutional methods of execution, allowing the process to resume after a 13-year hiatus.
SC high court rules electrocution and firing squad are allowed execution methods
Moore was executed by lethal injection in November.
Sigmon is one of three remaining men on death row who have exhausted their appeals and are eligible for execution.
Lethal injection questions
Sigmon’s decision stemmed from his concerns over whether lethal injection is truly a painless death, his attorneys said in their statement.
Last week, Sigmon’s attorneys again asked the state Supreme Court to halt his execution and require prison officials to provide more information about the state’s supply of lethal injection drugs.
The state’s highest court denied those requests Thursday.
Sigmon’s latest request echoed several others submitted on behalf of him and other inmates. His attorneys unsuccessfully asked the Supreme Court at the beginning of February to wait until he had the autopsy from the latest execution to proceed, questioning whether the process went as smoothly as officials said.
The attorneys, who have represented all of the inmates executed so far, made a similar request ahead of Marion Bowman’s execution in January. They pointed to the results of Moore’s autopsy, which showed officials used two doses of the sedative pentobarbital despite previously saying the state’s protocol called for a single dose.
The attorneys also pointed to the execution’s timeline. Moore was declared dead about 20 minutes after the process began, suggesting something went wrong, they wrote in petitions for both Bowman and Sigmon.
Freddie Owens, who was executed in September, requested before his death that officials not perform an autopsy, and attorneys do not yet have Bowman’s autopsy.
“Brad has no illusions about what being shot will do to his body,” King said in a statement. “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.”
The state’s execution protocol is not publicly disclosed under a law making nearly everything about executions secret.
Nothing went wrong during Moore’s execution, or either of the other ones, state attorneys replied.
Moore and other inmates stopped breathing within minutes of officials administering the pentobarbital, media witnesses said after each execution. It’s common for the heart to continue sending electrical impulses through a monitor for 10 minutes or more after that, the attorneys wrote.
A federal judge has repeatedly turned down requests from inmates to require officials give more information about its supply of lethal injection drugs, which the prisons agency was able to acquire in 2023 after the Legislature expanded the state’s secrecy law.
Claims of mental illness
During Sigmon’s initial trial in 2002, his attorneys did not dig enough into his history of mental illness, brain damage and childhood trauma, his current attorneys claimed in a Thursday court filing.
Information on his mental condition during the crime could potentially have convinced the jury to hand down a different sentence, his attorneys wrote. They asked the state Supreme Court to halt his execution long enough for a judge to hear arguments on whether to overturn Sigmon’s death sentence.
Sigmon, one of 29 men remaining on death row, was convicted of killing David and Gladys Larke in 2001 after they attempted to evict him from the trailer in which he had been living on their property.
When Sigmon’s ex-girlfriend, Becky Barbare, returned home, he forced her by gunpoint into her car. She escaped, and Sigmon fled. He later told officers he had planned to kill Barbare and himself, they testified during his trial.
Sigmon never claimed innocence, admitting to the crime during his trial. At 67 years old, he would be the oldest person ever executed in the state.
After Barbare ended her three-year relationship with Sigmon, he went into “a manic and irrational episode akin to a psychotic break,” his attorneys wrote.
That “fractured mental state,” emphasized by heavy drinking and drug use the night before the crime, explains why Sigmon committed such a grisly crime despite no history of violence, his attorneys wrote.
“This crime was brutal and bizarre,” the petition reads.
He also has bipolar disorder and cognitive impairment, which his attorneys did not know about at the time of his trial, his new claim reads.
Bipolar disorder can cause manic episodes, in which a person experiences a rush of energy, often accompanied by paranoia and impulsive behavior. That was coupled with a traumatic childhood involving an alcoholic and abusive father and an absent mother, Sigmon’s attorneys wrote.
Misdiagnosed with depression in prison and unmedicated during his trial, Sigmon suffered a mental break, causing him to make an erratic and at times profane confession to the jury, his attorneys wrote.
Neither Sigmon’s original trial attorneys nor his appeals attorneys did enough to discover his history of mental illness that might explain his actions, his current attorneys wrote.
“As a result, Mr. Sigmon’s jury was not only prevented from learning the most critical, mitigating aspects of his background, but, with Mr. Sigmon’s unexplained and erratic behavior at trial, were primed to accept the solicitor’s uncontested condemnation of him as a ‘mean and evil person,’” the petition reads.
Attorneys for the state have not yet responded to that filing.