US carries out first firing squad execution since 2010
A South Carolina man convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend's parents with a baseball bat was put to death by firing squad on Friday in the first such execution in the United States in 15 years.
Brad Sigmon, 67, was executed by a three-person firing squad at the Broad River Correctional Institution in the state capital Columbia, South Carolina prison spokeswoman Chrysti Shain said.
Shain said the fatal shots were fired at 6:05 pm (2305 GMT) and Sigmon was pronounced dead by a physician at 6:08 pm (2308 GMT).
Journalists who witnessed the execution from behind bulletproof glass said Sigmon was wearing a black jumpsuit and was strapped into a chair in the death chamber with a small red bullseye made of paper or cloth over his heart.
In a final statement read out by his attorney, Gerald "Bo" King, Sigmon said he wanted to send a message of "love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty."
A hood was then placed over Sigmon's head and about two minutes later shots were fired by the firing squad made up of volunteers from the South Carolina Department of Corrections through a slit in a wall about 15 feet (five meters away).
Anna Dobbins of WYFF News 4 TV station said the shots "were all fired at once" like it was "just one sound."
"His arms flexed," Dobbins said. "There was something in his midsection that moved -- I'm not necessarily going to call them breaths, I don't really know -- but there was some movement that went on there for two or three seconds."
"It was very fast," she said. "I did see a splash of blood when the bullets entered his body. It was not a huge amount, but there was a splash."
Sigmon, who confessed to the 2001 murders of David and Gladys Larke and admitted his guilt at trial, had asked the Supreme Court for a last-minute stay of execution but it was denied.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster also rejected his appeal for clemency.
- 'Impossible' position -
Sigmon had a choice between lethal injection, the firing squad or the electric chair.
King, his lawyer, said Sigmon had chosen the firing squad after being placed in an "impossible" position, forced to decide how he would die.
The electric chair "would burn and cook him alive," he said, but the alternative was "just as monstrous."
"If he chose lethal injection, he risked the prolonged death suffered by all three of the men South Carolina has executed since September," King said.
The last firing squad execution in the United States was in Utah in 2010, which also carried out two others, one in 1996 and one in 1977.
The 1977 execution of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore was the basis for the 1979 book "The Executioner's Song" by Norman Mailer.
The vast majority of US executions have been done by lethal injection since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Alabama has carried out four executions recently using nitrogen gas, which has been denounced by UN experts as cruel and inhumane. The execution is performed by pumping nitrogen gas into a facemask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.
Three other states -- Idaho, Mississippi and Oklahoma -- have joined South Carolina and Utah in authorizing the use of firing squads.
There have been six executions in the United States so far this year following 25 last year.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others -- California, Oregon and Pennsylvania -- have moratoriums in place.
President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and on his first day in office called for an expansion of its use "for the vilest crimes."
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