Supreme Court clears way for first firing squad execution in 15 years  

WASHINGTON (CN) — Convicted killer Brad Keith Sigmon can’t get more time to weigh the inhumanity of South Carolina’s execution methods, the Supreme Court said Friday, setting up the first firing squad execution in the United States in almost 15 years.

The justices’ brief order did not explain the court’s decision. There were no noted dissents.

Sigmon was sentenced to death in 2002 for the murders of Gladys and David Larke. Last year, South Carolina’s high court ruled against Sigmon and other inmates in a challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s execution law, restarting executions in the state after a 13-year pause.

In South Carolina, condemned prisoners are executed by electrocution by default, but they can select another available method they find more humane.

Sigmon chose firing squad — but he says he was rushed into that choice because of South Carolina’s unlawful execution procedures. In an effort to delay his execution, he filed an emergency appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday night, arguing that the justices needed to review whether the state had violated his due process rights.

“Staying Mr. Sigmon’s execution pending this Court’s consideration of his petition serves the public’s interest in ensuring that judicial review of Mr. Sigmon’s claim takes place and that capital punishment is carried out in compliance with Due Process,” the death-row inmate wrote. “Indeed, carrying out executions in a humane and constitutional manner is vitally important to the public.”

South Carolina opposed Sigmon’s application, arguing that his claims were meritless and simply aimed at delaying his execution. The state said Sigmon has been litigating his execution method for four years.

“If courts give him more delays, he will always have more claims,” the state wrote. “At some point, the delays must end.”

South Carolina is one of only five states that authorize firing squads. Ronnie Gardner, killed in Utah in 2010, was the last person to be executed by firing squad in the United States.

For a firing squad execution, a prisoner is typically strapped to a chair that is surrounded by sandbags to absorb any bullets or blood, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The prisoner wears a black hood, and a target pinned to their chest.

Utah uses five volunteer shooters, including one with a blank round. South Carolina’s execution protocol instead uses three live shooters.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the shooters are only provided with one round each. If the prisoner is not immediately killed after shots are fired, they slowly bleed to death.

Friday’s execution will be conducted at Broad River Correctional Institution’s capital punishment facility in Columbia, which underwent a $53,600 renovation to accommodate firing squads.

Inside the death chamber, a metal chair for firing squad executions sits in the corner. The current electric chair sits in the middle, facing a witness room that was outfitted with bullet-resistant glass. The firing squad chair is surrounded with protective equipment and faces a wall with rectangular opening 15 feet away, where volunteer employees will fire from.

The South Carolina Corrections Department said shooters will be using .308 Winchester TAP URBAN ammunition. It has not released the type of rifle that will be used for Friday’s execution.

Recent executions in South Carolina prolonged the deaths of prisoners, raising concerns over cruel treatment. Lethal injection is typically carried out with a single dose of pentobarbital — but in several recent executions, the South Carolina Corrections Department had to use subsequent doses after the first was unsuccessful.

The executions lasted over 20 minutes. Autopsies on the men revealed their lungs were swollen with fluid, a condition known as pulmonary edema that results in sensations of drowning.

In an affidavit, an anesthesiologist said it was “a physiological and pharmacological impossibility” for a single dose of so much pentobarbital to result in protracted deaths.

Sigmon petitioned to delay his execution until an autopsy of the last execution was made available. He argued that the single dose of properly administered pentobarbital was constitutional but said problems with South Carolina’s recent executions raised concerns.

Without the autopsy information, Sigmon said, he couldn’t meaningfully exercise his right to choose a humane execution method. The South Carolina Supreme Court disagreed, denying Sigmon’s request for a delay.

“If the purpose of the ‘choice provisions’ is to ensure that Mr. Sigmon ‘never be subjected to execution by a method he contends is more inhumane than another method that is available,’ this timetable ensures only that he can make no contention whatsoever,” Sigmon wrote.

Between lethal injection, firing squad or the electric chair, Sigmon chose firing squad.

After he made his choice, the last execution’s autopsy was released, showing similar abnormalities.

Sigmon told the Supreme Court that he needed information about the quality and reliability of the corrections department’s execution drugs to assess whether lethal injection would be more inhumane than the firing squad.

“Even as one execution after another demonstrates the inadequacy of the certifications, the court below has continued to set the bar too low for SCDC to fail,” Sigmon wrote. “Mr. Sigmon is thus left with the ostensible right to ‘some basic facts about the [lethal injection] drug’s creation, quality, and reliability, or … the drugs’ potency, purity, and stability,’ but with no means of enforcing that right against SCDC.”

South Carolina argued that Sigmon didn’t have any stake in the litigation because he chose to be executed by firing squad, not lethal injection.

Sigmon is scheduled to be killed at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Friday.

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