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TO South Carolina The inmate of the death corridor has chosen to be executed by a firing squad, which would make it the fourth inmate in the United States to die with this method of execution.
Brad Sigmon, 67, who is scheduled to be killed on March 7, informed state officials on Friday that he wishes to die at the shooting squad instead of lethal injection or the electric chair, citing, in part, the prolonged ones who suffer from the three inmates previously executed in the state, they had faced when they were killed by lethal injection.
Sigmon was South Carolina’s first inmate in choosing a shots squad. Only three inmates in the United States have been executed by this method since 1976 and all were in Utah, and the last one carried out 15 years ago.
In the Chamber of Death, Sigmon will be tied to a chair and will have a hood on his head and a goal about his heart. Three shooters will shoot him through a small opening about 15 feet away.
Brad Sigmon was convicted of killing death to the parents of his separate girlfriend in Greenville County in 2001. (South Carolina Corrections Department through AP)
Sigmon’s lawyers asked to delay their execution date earlier this month because they sought information on whether the last prison executed by the State, Marion Bowman, received two doses of the sedative pentobarbital in its execution on January 31. It is not clear if Sigmon’s lawyers have received the Bowman autopsy report, which they had requested together with additional information about the lethal injection medication.
The judges denied the request for a postponed execution.
Sigmon was sentenced in the 2001 baseball bat murders of his ex -girlfriend’s parents at his home in Greenville County. The two were in separate rooms, the researchers said, and Sigmon was round trip between the rooms while hitting them to death.
After Killing the coupleSigmon kidnapped her ex -girlfriend at gunpoint, but she managed to escape her car. He shot her while she escaped but lost.
“I couldn’t have it, I wasn’t going to let anyone else have it,” he said in a confession.
Sigmon’s lawyers now have one last appeal, asking the Supreme Court of the State to stop their execution to allow a hearing on their claims that their litigating lawyers lacked experience and failed by not stopping their statement to the jury or completely bringing their illness their illness mental or his hard family life when he was a child before the jury.
After that final appeal, Sigmon’s last opportunity to save his life may be asking Republican governor Henry McMaster to reduce his sentence to life without probation, but no governor of South Carolina has granted clemency in the 49 years After the death penalty resumed.
This photo provided by the South Carolina Corrections Department shows the State Death Chamber in Columbia, South Carolina, including the electric chair, the right and a shooting squad, on the left. (South Carolina Corrections Department through AP)
He State Legislature He approved the shooting squad after prison officials had difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs due to the concerns of pharmaceutical companies that they would have to reveal that drugs had sold drugs to state officials. Then, the state legislature approved the law of the shield, allowing officials to keep deprivation of lethal injection drugs, but the farewell team continued to be an option.
Sigmon’s lawyers said he chose the lethal injection due to concerns about the three previous executions since the State resumed the realization of the death penalty in September after an involuntary pause of 13 years and moved to use a massive dose Pentobarbital. Witnesses of the three previous executions said that although men seem to stop breathing and move in just a few minutes, they were not declared dead for at least 20 minutes.
Sigmon did not select the electric chair because “he would burn and cook alive,” said his lawyer, Gerald “Bo” King, in a statement.
“The election that Brad faced today was impossible,” King wrote. “Unless he chose the lethal injection or the shots squad, he would die in the old electric chair of South Carolina, which would burn and cook him alive. But the alternative is equally monstrous.”
“If he chose the lethal injection, he risked the prolonged death suffered by the three men that South Carolina has executed since September, three men that Brad knew and cared for, who remained alive, tied to a gurney, for more than twenty minutes. Less one required a second mass dose of Pentobarbital before his heart stopped, and died with fluid swollen lungs “He continued.
South Carolina keeping information about how lethal injections led him to decide on the shooting squad, what he recognizes will be a violent death, said his lawyer.
“The only option that remained is the shots squad. Brad has no illusions about what will shoot his body,” King said. “He doesn’t want to inflict that pain to his family, witnesses or the execution team. But, given the unnecessary and inconceivable secret of South Carolina, Brad is choosing the best he can.”
The room where inmates are executed in Columbus, South Carolina. (South Carolina Corrections Department through AP)
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The autopsy report has been published only for one of the executions. Prison officials said Richard Moore received two large doses of Pentobarbital with 11 minutes on November 1. Sigmon’s lawyers said Moore’s autopsy showed unusual amounts of fluids in the lungs, and an expert suggested that he could have felt consciously drowning and suffocating during the 23 minutes they took to be pronounced dead.
State lawyers said the fluid is not unusual for executions for a large dose of pentobarbital and cited witnesses who said that the inmates executed in the state so far have only been aware and breathing for approximately a minute after the process begins .
There was no autopsy after the execution of Freddie Owens on September 20 to his request, citing religious reasons due to his Muslim faith.
South Carolina has executed 46 inmates since the death penalty resumed in the United States in 1976. In the early 2000s, the State carried out an average of three executions per year. Only nine states have killed more inmates.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
