Double murderer is first US inmate executed by firing squad in 15 years

Reuters

Sigmon's lawyer, Bo King, had been hoping for a last-minute stay of execution by the South Carolina governor and accused the state of withholding information about the lethal injection process.

"Brad only wanted assurances that these drugs were not expired, or diluted, or spoiled—what any of us would want to know about the medication we take, or the food we eat, much less the means of our death," he said in a statement after his death.

"It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle."

King said his client had been suffering from mental illness, and that the friendships he formed in prison were proof he had been rehabilitated.

"Brad is someone who, for his last meal, asked to get three buckets of original recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken so he could share with the guys that he's incarcerated with on death row," he told a WYFF-TV earlier on Friday.

"With his last meal, he wanted to share something special with them," he said, later telling reporters that the request to share had been denied.

Officials later confirmed his last meal as four pieces of fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes with gravy, biscuits, cheesecake and sweet tea. The meal was served on Wednesday evening.

Since 1977 only three people had died by firing squad, all three of them in the state of Utah. The last to die had been Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.

Ahead of Sigmon's execution, anti-death penalty protesters held a rally outside the jail in the city of Columbia.

They held signs saying "all life is precious" and "thou shalt not kill".

The state allows witnesses to observe the death from behind bulletproof glass, but the executioners are hidden from view to protect their identities.

South Carolina passed a law in 2023 requiring that the identities of the execution team members remain secret.