A prisoner in South Carolina, sentenced for the murder of his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat, will be the first person in the US to be executed by firing squad in 15 years.
If the execution of Brad Sigmon proceeds on Friday at 6:00 PM local time (11:00 PM GMT), three volunteers standing behind a curtain will shoot simultaneously at his chest with specially designed bullets.
State procedures require death row inmates to be strapped to a chair when entering the execution chamber, reports BBC, as transmitted by Sinjali.
Sigmon, 67, was sentenced for the murders of David and Gladys Larke in 2001, before kidnapping his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint. She later escaped while he shot at her.
Offered the alternatives of death by electric chair or lethal injection, Sigmon’s lawyers stated that he chose the more violent method due to his concerns over the effectiveness of the other two methods.
He will be the first person to be executed by firing squad in the US since 2010 and only the fourth since the country reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
