Brad Sigmon, a convicted double murderer, has been executed by firing squad in South Carolina. It was the first execution by firing squad in the United States since 2010, the first ever for South Carolina and only the fourth since the reinstitution of capital punishment in the U.S. in 1976.
Sigmon, who at 67 is the oldest person to be executed in South Carolina, chose firing squad over the two more common methods of lethal injection or electric chair, and was pronounced dead at 6:08 p.m. ET on Friday.
Sigmon was convicted of the 2001 murders of his ex-girlfriend’s parents, who were bludgeoned to death. He also kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, but she managed to escape.
In a statement shared by his lawyer, Sigmon said, “I want my closing statement to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty.”
One of Sigmon’s lawyers, Gerald “Bo” King, explained that Sigmon felt that death by firing squad was his only choice, ”after the state’s three executions by lethal injection inflicted prolonged and potentially torturous deaths on men he loved like brothers," and the state failed to provide assurances about the quality of the drugs that would be used in a potential lethal injection.
King explained, “Brad only wanted assurances that these drugs were not expired, or diluted, or spoiled—what any of us would want to know about the medication we take, or the food we eat, much less the means of our death.”
Both South Carolina’s Republican Governor, Gov. Henry McMaster, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to halt Sigmon’s execution.
Following his client’s execution, King said in a statement, “Brad’s death was horrifying and violent. It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle.”
South Carolina reinstated the death penalty in 1974. In 2021, after a decade with no executions, the state legislature authorized the use of the electric chair and firing squad, in addition to lethal injection. One execution by firing squad was previously halted by the state Supreme Court in 2022 and an injunction against the use of the electric chair or firing squad issued as they violated the state’s constitutional prohibition against “cruel, unusual, and corporal punishments.”
The death penalty is legal in 27 U.S. states and at the federal level, making the U.S. just one of three OECD member countries that retain the death penalty (the other two are Japan and South Korea, the latter of which has not carried out an execution since 1997). Globally, it is still legal in 56 countries, while 112 have abolished it entirely, including Canada, the U.K., Mexico, EU member states, and Australia.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the number of new death sentences issued in 2024 climbed to 26. Public support for the death penalty remains at a five-decade low of just 53 percent. In December 2024, then-President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 men on federal death row, while North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper commuted the sentences of 15 men on the state’s death row.
In 2019, the Trump administration announced its decision to resume executions for federal crimes, and under President Donald Trump, 13 federal inmates were executed. On the first day of his second term, Trump issued a memorandum rescinding former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s moratorium on federal executions.
