The first US prisoner to be killed by firing squad in 15 years is a killer on death row. After expressing his fear of being “tortured by lethal injection” and the electric chair, 67-year-old Brad Sigmon was given the opportunity to select the method of his execution, reports The Mirror.
After killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat in a failed effort to abduct their daughter, he was sent on death row in South Carolina, USA. In order to allow volunteer prison personnel to execute him with guns on Friday, Sigmon wore a black jumpsuit with a hood over his head and a white target with a red bullseye over his chest.
Within two minutes, Sigmon was pronounced dead after the three workers shot simultaneously through holes in a wall, reports The Mirror.
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Because he and his attorneys believed that the electric chair would “cook him alive,” and that a deadly pentobarbital injection into his veins would cause a surge of blood and fluid to enter his lungs, drowning the killer, they decided on this approach.
There were around a dozen witnesses in a room with bulletproof glass separating it from the death chamber, reports The Mirror.
The public claimed to have seen and heard Sigmon gasp significantly in the two minutes after the gunfire, but they were unable to see the jail staff.
Three relatives of Sigmon’s victims, David and Gladys Larke, were among the witnesses, reports The Mirror.
When Sigmon said he planned to abduct their daughter, take her away for a romantic weekend, and then killed her and himself, they were killed in Greenville County, South Carolina, in 2001.
But during the altercation, Sigmon hit both parents with the baseball bat, and he was found guilty of two killings, reports The Mirror.
Four pieces of fried chicken, green beans, gravy-topped mashed potatoes, biscuits, cheesecake, and sweet tea were Sigmon’s final dinner.
The execution method is the first in the United States since Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49, was on Utah’s death row in 2010. He was found guilty of killing a young man during a robbery, reports The Mirror.
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