A South Carolina man is set to die by firing squad Friday evening, marking the nation’s first such execution since 2010.
Brad Sigmon, 67, chose the firing squad over death by lethal injection or the electric chair. He delayed his execution by multiple years after suing in 2021 to make the firing squad an option.
The last firing squad execution in the U.S. occurred in Utah, where Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed for killing an attorney decades earlier.
The identities of the three shooters on the firing squad are protected by a 2023 South Carolina state law. They’ve been identified only as members of the state’s corrections department. The firing squad will stand 15 feet away from Sigmon and aim for a target placed over his heart.
Sigmon was sentenced to death in 2002 for beating his ex-girlfriend’s parents, David and Gladys Larke, to death with a baseball bat in their Greenville County home in 2001.
After the killings, Sigmon kidnapped his former girlfriend at gunpoint, but she managed to escape from his car. He shot at her as she ran away but missed.
Sigmon was originally scheduled for execution on Feb. 12, 2021. He was to be killed by a century-old electric chair, but South Carolina’s top court ruled he needed to have options for his execution. At the time, the state was out of pentobarbital, the drug used in lethal injections.
South Carolina has since acquired more pentobarbital — it was used to kill Mario Bowman in January — but Sigmon still chose death by firing squad.
Only three people have been executed by firing squad in the U.S. since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. All three of those executions occurred in Utah.