Brad Sigmon will be put to death by firing squad Friday. (Kinard Lisbon/South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP, left, South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP, right.)
TEXAS DEATH ROW INMATE MOUTHS FINAL 2-WORD MESSAGE TO VICTIMS' FAMILIES BEFORE EXECUTION
The execution will go ahead if South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson signed off on it. Sigmon’s lawyers have asked McMaster to commute his death sentence to life in prison, arguing that he is a model prisoner and works every day to atone for the killings he committed after succumbing to severe mental illness. But no South Carolina governor has granted clemency in the 49 years since the death penalty resumed.
Sigmon chose the firing squad method over the electric chair which would "cook him alive," or a lethal injection, whose details are kept secret in South Carolina, his lawyers said.
South Carolina keeping information secret about how it conducts lethal injections led him to decide on the firing squad, which he acknowledges will be a violent death, his lawyer said. On Thursday, Sigmon’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to delay his execution because the state doesn't release enough information about the lethal injection drug.
Sigmon said he carried out the brutal slayings because he was angry that the victims had been evicted from a trailer they owned. They were in separate rooms of their Greenville County home and Sigmon went back and forth attacking them until they were dead, investigators said.
He then shot at his ex-girlfriend as she fled, but missed, prosecutors said.
This photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the state's death chamber in Columbia, S.C., including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
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Executions in South Carolina resumed in September, when the state – once one of the busiest for executions – ended a 13-year pause in carrying out the death penalty.
The pause was caused in part by the state having difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs after their supply expired because of pharmaceutical companies' concerns that they would have to disclose they had sold the drugs to state officials. The state legislature then passed a shield law allowing officials to keep lethal injection drug suppliers private.
Twenty-five executions were carried out in the U.S. last year. Five have already been carried out in 2025, per the Death Penalty Information Center.
Fox News’ Landon Mion and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.
You can send tips to michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/south-carolina-convict-inches-closer-first-us-death-firing-squad-15-years