South Carolina Executes Inmate by Firing Squad

The state of South Carolina executed a convicted assassin by firing squad on Friday night time within the first such execution in the US since 2010.

The inmate, Brad Sigmon, 67, was declared useless at 6:08 p.m. after a firing squad shot three bullets on the goal positioned over his coronary heart, the State Division of Corrections mentioned.

A choose had ordered Mr. Sigmon, who was convicted of beating his ex-girlfriend’s dad and mom to dying with a baseball bat in 2001, to select from three strategies of execution: deadly injection, electrocution or firing squad. His lawyer, Gerald King, mentioned that Mr. Sigmon had chosen to be shot as a result of he had issues about South Carolina’s deadly injection course of.

In response to three reporters who witnessed the execution, Mr. Sigmon took a number of deep breaths earlier than the photographs had been fired. After he was shot, his chest rose and fell about two occasions and his arms stiffened, based on the reporters, who had been from The Related Press, The Publish and Courier and WYFF, a neighborhood TV station.

Mr. Sigmon is the primary inmate in South Carolina historical past to be killed in such a way. Polls present {that a} majority of People favor the dying penalty, however many view the firing squad as an archaic type of justice. However as deadly injection medication have develop into tougher to acquire, and have at occasions resulted in botched executions, a number of states have lately legalized firing squads as an execution technique.

Utah had beforehand been the one state to make use of a firing squad in trendy occasions; it did so in 2010, 1996 and 1977.