The convicted double murderer is scheduled to die Friday after firing a squad in South Carolina. This was his first execution in the United States in 15 years.
Brad Sigmon, 67, personally demanded extraordinary punishment after fearing that the electric chair would “cook him to life,” his lawyer, Gerald King, wrote in a statement.
He also refused the fatal injection after receiving the fatal dose of pentobarbital, his lawyer said.
Sigmon will become the first South Carolina prisoner to choose the killing method of the state's new shooting squad, and will become the first inmate to be executed by filming since 2010.
The murderer is tied to a chair, his hood is placed on his head, and the target is placed in the heart of the death room.
Three volunteers fire him through a small opening about 15 feet away.
Sigmon was convicted of the 2001 baseball bat murder of the parents of ex-girlfriend Rebecca Barbale at her Greenville County home.
Court documents show that Sigmon smoked on the night of the murder and was drinking on the night of the murder, when he said “leave Becky in her way” and “connecting her parents.”
They were in separate rooms and Sigmon beat them so they went back and forth, investigators said.
I heard at the trial during the trial that my husband's skulls were basically broken by two people.
He then lured his ex-girlfriend at the muzzle, but she escaped from his car. Prosecutors said he ran but shot her when he missed.
In his confession, Sigmon said, “I couldn't have her, I had no intention of having someone else have her.”
He planned to kill both Barbare and himself, and later testified to the officers.
Sigmon argued that, according to a stay at the action submitted by his lawyer to the Supreme Court of South Carolina, he thought his alternative would be more tortured, and that he was forced to choose a violent death by dismissing the troops.
Since 1976, only three US prisoners have been fired, all of which have been held in Utah.
Sigmon's lawyers asked him to delay his execution date in February as he wanted to know if a prisoner from Marion Bowman, a former South Carolina execution, was given two doses of pentobarbital at his January 31 execution and looked over his autopsy report.
Sigmon knows it will be a violent death, his lawyer said.
“He doesn't want to inflict that pain on his family, his witnesses or his execution team, but given South Carolina's unnecessary and ruthless secrets, Brad is trying his best to do his best,” King said.
Sigmon is probably the oldest of the 46 South Carolina prisoners who have been executed since the death penalty was resumed in the United States in 1976.
