1st case in 15 years

Sentenced to death chooses firing squad

Brad Sigmon does not want to be executed by lethal injection or in the electric chair. He chose a firing squad.(Bild: KameraOne)

A convicted murderer in South Carolina named Brad Sigmon does not want to be executed by lethal injection or in the electric chair. He chooses a firing squad. It is the first case in 15 years.

Sigmon is scheduled to be strapped to a chair at 6 p.m. local time Friday in the death chamber used for all executions in South Carolina at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.

A target is to be placed over his heart and a hood pulled over his head. Three gunmen who volunteered for the firing squad a few days ago will shoot Sigmon simultaneously from a distance of 4.6 meters.

Brad Sigmon(Bild: AP/AP ( via APA) Austria Presse Agentur)

No confidence in lethal injection
Sigmon's attorneys wanted to delay his death in advance to get a more detailed court hearing and more information about the drug South Carolina uses in lethal injections. Sigmon said the lack of information in that regard ultimately forced him to decide against lethal injection. The state also has an electric chair, but he said he did not want to be "boiled alive by electricity."

"Exemplary inmate" 
 Sigmon wants to ask Republican Governor Henry McMaster in a final request to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment. His lawyers say he is an exemplary prisoner who is trusted by guards and works every day to atone for the murders he committed after "succumbing to severe mental illness".

The inmate had once beaten his ex-girlfriend's parents to death with a baseball bat. He then tried to murder the woman too - but she managed to escape.