The above shows the execution chamber in the Department of Corrections’ Columbia prisons complex, as seen from the witness room. The firing squad chair (left) was added following a 2021 state law that made death by firing squad an option. The electric chair is under the cover. (Provided by the S.C. Department of Corrections)
Washington is in utter chaos, monopolizing the public’s attention, but that should not distract us from the nightmare in South Carolina.
On Friday, unless the courts or Gov. Henry McMaster intervene, South Carolina for the first time will execute a prisoner by firing squad.
The details are sickening, but South Carolinians should understand that this barbaric act is being carried out in our name.
On March 7, 67-year-old inmate Brad Sigmon will be strapped to a chair in the Capital Punishment Facility at the Broad River Correctional Institution.
A hood will be placed over his head. A member of the execution team will then place a target on Sigmon’s heart. After the warden reads the execution order, a three-person firing squad will aim and shoot to kill. A doctor will then examine Sigmon to confirm his death.
Sigmon will be the first American inmate shot to death in an execution in 15 years.
The firing squad is so archaic and morally repugnant that only five U.S. states even allow the practice.
But it’s almost never used in any state.
There have been only three firing-squad executions in the U.S. in the past 50 years. All of them took place in only one state: Utah.
Setting a firing squad on a human being is a practice associated with the world’s most backward, repressive, undemocratic regimes — like Afghanistan, China and North Korea.
Those are not models of Western human rights.
Drawing a line
In the U.S., firing squads were most associated with the military during the Civil War.
Even supporters of the death penalty often draw a line when it comes to the firing squad. And many believe, as the nation’s founders did, that capital punishment should be used only when absolutely necessary.
Absolute necessity can’t be argued in this case. Sigmon is 67 years old and in declining health.
Sigmon has suffered at least one stroke and due to a near-total blockage of his carotid arteries, is at great risk for another, according to South Carolinians for Alternatives to
the Death Penalty.
Sigmon would be the oldest person ever executed in South Carolina.
It’s true that Sigmon committed a horrendous 2002 crime in Greenville County. A jury found Sigmon guilty of beating the parents of his estranged girlfriend to death with a baseball bat. He should remain in prison.
But for more than 20 years behind bars, Sigmon has not posed a danger to anyone. A devout Christian, Sigmon is deeply remorseful and has been a model prisoner — a mentor to others, according to South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
Brutalizing effect
The death penalty, especially one delivered in such a horrific manner as a firing squad, has a brutalizing, dehumanizing effect on a state.
But whether by lethal injection or any other means, capital punishment has been shown to be especially traumatic for the execution team.
The State newspaper in 2022 interviewed 10 former South Carolina executioners and found them wracked for years afterward with guilt, stress, nightmares and thoughts of suicide. One former executioner termed capital punishment “state-assisted homicide.”
South Carolina’s firing squad supposedly will be recruited among volunteers at the Department of Corrections. But asking someone to kill another person is an inhuman request.
In effect, it may be sentencing the members of the firing squad to a lifetime of debilitating remorse.
In the military tradition of the firing squad, one or more members were often given blank cartridges to diffuse responsibility among the shooters. It was thought to lessen the obvious psychological impact of directly killing someone.
All three members of the South Carolina firing squad, however, will be using rifles loaded with live ammunition.
Advocating for decency
A firing squad is a particularly heinous method of execution, but ministers and civil rights advocates with South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty argue that capital punishment itself is morally wrong.
Many Americans agree. Support for the death penalty has fallen dramatically in the past few decades.
Americans also recognize that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime.
State violence only begets more violence. Despite having a death penalty, South Carolina’s homicide rate ranks among the nation’s 10 highest, based on 2022 figures, the most recent numbers available.
Twenty-three states have abolished the death penalty, and six other states have gubernatorial moratoriums in effect, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Only nine states, including South Carolina, conducted an execution in 2024.
In addition, states spend far more money on death-penalty cases than on life-imprisonment cases.
A stark reality about the death penalty is that it remains the only punishment that is irrevocable, and the justice system has made tragic mistakes.
Anyone who yearns for a less violent and more decent South Carolina should contact Gov. McMaster or sign a petition to spare Brad Sigmon’s life.