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Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Restarting executions in TN amounts to subjecting death row prisoners to torture
Thumbing its nose at my argument in The Tennessean, in 2019, that 'There are many facts that clearly show the death penalty should be obsolete,' Tennessee is set to execute folks again. As The Tennessean reported recently, the state 'has announced plans to resume capital punishment with a new, more vague protocol for lethal injection — [one even vaguer than the previous protocol the state had a track record for botching. Now it will use] one drug called pentobarbital.' This will satisfy only the animalistic desire for violently fatal retribution which civilized societies around the world long ago outlawed; they hoped the U.S. someday would follow suit, or, at least, that individual states like Tennessee would start to shutter their barbaric death penalty regimes; that's why in that 2019 essay I insisted: 'We must be honest about the death penalty's repugnance.' I advanced then — and resubmit — that 'In these times, we must embolden noble, courageous people who exist in America, people with integrity, to call lethal injection the vile torture it is.' Tennessee has plenty of prison space to incarcerate the 'worst of the worst,' saving Tennesseans a whole heap of money in lawyers' fees and other costs of maintaining Tennessee's barbaric machinery of death (think of the officials who get paid to be involved, the lethal drugs, etcetera). And as The Tennessean astutely reported, there is a real 'lack of transparency over how the state is securing' the pentobarbital it will use, and therefore questions about whether it could be of shoddy quality. This should be especially alarming as witnesses of pentobarbital executions have described condemned prisoners 'gasping for air before they died and autopsies showing their lungs were filled with fluid akin to drowning' (and the horrific torture known as 'waterboarding' ). The Tennessean rightly observed that despite Trump's Justice Department's gung-ho approach to the death penalty, 'former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland halted the use of pentobarbital for federal death row inmates after it was unable to determine whether the drug causes 'unnecessary pain and suffering.'' However, it's critical Tennesseans understand that legal experts who study executions have come to much starker conclusions about pentobarbital. In a new book called 'Secrets of the Killing State' — about 'the untold story of lethal injection' — Corinna Barrett Kain, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, minces no words in her scholarly work that anyone who wants to know the truth about lethal injection must read. She concludes that 'pentobarbital executions are torturous in their own right.' About Lain's book, Bryan Stevenson, author of 'Just Mercy' and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative wrote: 'A compelling, thoroughly researched, brilliantly written investigation of how governments kill prisoners whose very lives may depend on the moral outrage of a nation that dares to look more closely at lethal injection and the death penalty. Disturbing, devastating, an urgent must-read.' As I've argued before to Tennesseans in this newspaper: 'Abolishing the death penalty requires morality, but it also requires people of conscience to speak honestly — and ask tough questions — in support of an unshakeable belief that should be uncontroversial in a civilized, principled society: The death penalty is racist, barbaric, and immoral.' And too: 'There exists too much mental illness, and far too much death and suffering in America already' and so all Americans, including Tennesseans, need to insist the state stop throwing scarce resources away on the death penalty in an immoral pursuit of 'justice.' Pardon my reliance on my past publications in The Tennessean on this subject of great importance — to Tennesseans who care about human rights — but it needs repetition: 'The constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment bears no asterisk for crimes committed by society's most despised.' Scheduling a flurry of lethal injections using pentobarbital is the wrong decision for Tennessee. It has already led to a flurry of litigation — with much more expected — and the amount of taxpayer money that is being used by the state to defend this torture will only mount. It is important to let the politicians who represent you know that this is not what you want. And it is not what you will vote for going forward. Tell them you want a government that focuses on improving the quality of life for its citizens—not one focused on secretive protocols for torturous killings. Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on "X"/Twitter @SteveCooperEsq This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Scholars call death penalty drug pentobarbital 'torturous' | Opinion
CNN
10-04-2025
- CNN
Why the firing squad may be making a comeback
South Carolina plans to execute Mikal Mahdi on Friday for the murder of a police officer, draping a hood over his head and firing three bullets into his heart. The choice to die by firing squad – rather than lethal injection or the electric chair – was Mahdi's own, his attorney said last month: 'Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils.' If it proceeds, Mahdi's execution would be the latest in a recent string of events that have put the spotlight on the firing squad as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation's dominant execution method. Mahdi's scheduled execution comes soon after the nation's first firing squad execution in 15 years, which South Carolina carried out on March 7. Five days later, Idaho's Republican governor signed into law HB 37, which will make Idaho the only state in the country with the firing squad as its primary execution method. There are a couple reasons why some states and death row inmates are turning to a method that might be seen as antiquated. First, the firing squad's reemergence is an outgrowth of states' troubles with lethal injection executions – including inadequate supplies of drugs, failed executions and legal challenges by inmates who claim their lethal injection protocols are torturous or risk violating Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. 'Lethal injection is how states execute – and also the reason they don't,' said Corinna Lain, a law professor at the University of Richmond School of Law and author of the forthcoming book, 'Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection.' Second, compared to the alternatives, experts say the firing squad is generally thought to be easy, fast and effective, despite its overt violence, which has likely contributed to states' hesitancy to use it. Some have wondered aloud about this point in recent years, including US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. In its 2015 ruling in Glossip v. Gross, the court upheld Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol. But it also ruled inmates challenging an execution method needed to identify an alternative. Sotomayor, today the court's most senior liberal, noted in her dissent that inmates might turn to the firing squad to meet this requirement, writing there was 'evidence to suggest' it is 'significantly more reliable than other methods,' and there was 'some reason to think that it is relatively quick and painless.' 'Certainly, use of the firing squad could be seen as a devolution to a more primitive era,' Sotomayor wrote, noting the 'visible brutality' could lead inmates to also challenge the method on Eighth Amendment grounds. 'At least from a condemned inmate's perspective, however, such visible yet relatively painless violence may be vastly preferable to an excruciatingly painful death hidden behind a veneer of medication,' she said. The firing squad is among the country's oldest execution methods, according to Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School who studies the death penalty and execution methods. But it's been used rarely, with just over 140 inmates put to death using that method since 1608, per her research. By contrast, lethal injection has been used more than 1,400 times since its advent in 1982. The firing squad had been used even more sparingly since 1976, when the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of capital punishment: Only four people have been executed by firing squad since then, including Brad Sigmon in South Carolina last month, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The other executions all occurred in Utah. Of the 27 states with the death penalty, only five authorize firing squad, and most include it as an option only if lethal injection is impossible, according to DPIC. All death penalty states – plus the US government and the US military – authorize lethal injection. Nine states authorize electrocution, and five authorize nitrogen hypoxia. 'With each development of a new technology of execution, the same promises are made: 'This method is safe, reliable and more humane than the alternative,'' said Austin Sarat, a professor of law and politics at Amherst College. The search for a method that checks these boxes culminated with lethal injection. But about 15 years ago, states began losing access to the drugs they needed, causing them to use different drug combinations or seek a different method altogether. Idaho struggled for years to obtain pentobarbital, the drug it needed for executions, Rep. Bruce Skaug, the Republican lawmaker who sponsored HB 37, told CNN. But when it did manage to get the drug, it failed at its first attempted lethal injection in 12 years: In February 2024, executioners were unable to set an IV line on inmate Thomas Creech, forcing officials to abort the execution. 'Because of that failure,' Skaug said, 'this year, we decided to bring firing squad to the number one option.' 'Justice delayed is justice denied,' Skaug said, telling CNN the victims of the nine people on Idaho's death row deserve justice. The firing squad will allow Idaho to avoid the challenges presented by lethal injection, Skaug said. Crucially, he does not anticipate the state will have issues sourcing firearms and ammunition it needs, he said. 'But really, personally, I find it more humane,' he said. 'It's sudden, it's quick. I'm told by experts that the convicted person is instantly unconscious, and so that's really a humane way of death.' Indeed, the firing squad 'is thought to cause nearly instant unconsciousness,' Dr. Jonathan Groner, emeritus professor of clinical surgery at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, previously told CNN. Firing bullets into a person's heart 'would instantly stop the blood flow to the brain, which, like a cardiac arrest, causes rapid loss of brain function,' he said. In 1938, officials performed an electrocardiogram on a Utah inmate who was put to death by firing squad. A doctor said it showed his heart stopped beating 15 seconds after the bullet was fired, though the inmate was declared dead more than two minutes later, according to Associated Press reporting at the time. An Associated Press reporter who witnessed Sigmon's firing squad execution in South Carolina last month said it was 'much quicker' than those he had seen using lethal injection and the electric chair. 'The time from the shots being fired to the time death was declared was a little over two minutes,' Jeffrey Collins said. Sarat's research also suggests states are unlikely to stray from their own protocols during a firing squad execution. Critics call this circumstance a 'botched execution.' For his 2014 book, 'Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty,' Sarat reviewed nearly 9,000 executions carried out in the United States between 1900 and 2010. While he documented only 34 firing squad executions, it was the only method to boast a zero percent 'botch rate' within that time frame. Of the other methods – including electrocution, lethal gas and hanging – lethal injection had the highest botch rate of more than 7%. Still, states have remained averse to the firing squad, a position that experts who spoke to CNN believe stems from its overt violence. Writing for USA Today, Bo King, an attorney for Sigmon, wrote about seeing blood flow from a 'fist-sized hole' over his client's stomach before hearing the explosions of the three rifles used in his execution last month, leaving the lawyer 'sick with rage.' In this way, the firing squad is lethal injection's 'exact opposite,' said Lain, the University of Richmond law professor. 'Ending life before the body is ready to end it requires violence,' Lain told CNN. 'And the chief benefit of lethal injection is it hides it. The chief downside of the firing squad is that it shows it explicitly. It shows what the death penalty is, which is the state shedding blood in your name.' 'I think it is an explicit debasement of our society. It is an embrace of brutality,' she said of the firing squad. 'But if there is a bright side, perhaps it is that it will start some very important conversations about the death penalty that have been long standing but suppressed, because lethal injection has internalized that violence.' This sentiment echoes Sotomayor, who in her Glossip v. Gross dissent alluded to the potential apprehension states might have in carrying out executions by firing squad. 'The States may well be reluctant to pull back the curtain for fear of how the rest of us might react to what we see,' she wrote. 'But we deserve to know the price of our collective comfort before we blindly allow a State to make condemned inmates pay it in our names.' Skaug, the lawmaker, believes Idahoans will not be made uneasy by the firing squad. They're familiar with firearms, he said – for war and self-defense, but also as tools. And those facing execution, he added, 'carried out violent acts against other people … horrifically violent acts.' 'So, a bit of violence with bullets to the heart does not bother us, those that want to see this carried out.'
CNN
10-04-2025
- CNN
Why the firing squad may be making a comeback
South Carolina plans to execute Mikal Mahdi on Friday for the murder of a police officer, draping a hood over his head and firing three bullets into his heart. The choice to die by firing squad – rather than lethal injection or the electric chair – was Mahdi's own, his attorney said last month: 'Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils.' If it proceeds, Mahdi's execution would be the latest in a recent string of events that have put the spotlight on the firing squad as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation's dominant execution method. Mahdi's scheduled execution comes soon after the nation's first firing squad execution in 15 years, which South Carolina carried out on March 7. Five days later, Idaho's Republican governor signed into law HB 37, which will make Idaho the only state in the country with the firing squad as its primary execution method. There are a couple reasons why some states and death row inmates are turning to a method that might be seen as antiquated. First, the firing squad's reemergence is an outgrowth of states' troubles with lethal injection executions – including inadequate supplies of drugs, failed executions and legal challenges by inmates who claim their lethal injection protocols are torturous or risk violating Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. 'Lethal injection is how states execute – and also the reason they don't,' said Corinna Lain, a law professor at the University of Richmond School of Law and author of the forthcoming book, 'Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection.' Second, compared to the alternatives, experts say the firing squad is generally thought to be easy, fast and effective, despite its overt violence, which has likely contributed to states' hesitancy to use it. Some have wondered aloud about this point in recent years, including US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. In its 2015 ruling in Glossip v. Gross, the court upheld Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol. But it also ruled inmates challenging an execution method needed to identify an alternative. Sotomayor, today the court's most senior liberal, noted in her dissent that inmates might turn to the firing squad to meet this requirement, writing there was 'evidence to suggest' it is 'significantly more reliable than other methods,' and there was 'some reason to think that it is relatively quick and painless.' 'Certainly, use of the firing squad could be seen as a devolution to a more primitive era,' Sotomayor wrote, noting the 'visible brutality' could lead inmates to also challenge the method on Eighth Amendment grounds. 'At least from a condemned inmate's perspective, however, such visible yet relatively painless violence may be vastly preferable to an excruciatingly painful death hidden behind a veneer of medication,' she said. The firing squad is among the country's oldest execution methods, according to Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School who studies the death penalty and execution methods. But it's been used rarely, with just over 140 inmates put to death using that method since 1608, per her research. By contrast, lethal injection has been used more than 1,400 times since its advent in 1982. The firing squad had been used even more sparingly since 1976, when the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of capital punishment: Only four people have been executed by firing squad since then, including Brad Sigmon in South Carolina last month, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The other executions all occurred in Utah. Of the 27 states with the death penalty, only five authorize firing squad, and most include it as an option only if lethal injection is impossible, according to DPIC. All death penalty states – plus the US government and the US military – authorize lethal injection. Nine states authorize electrocution, and five authorize nitrogen hypoxia. 'With each development of a new technology of execution, the same promises are made: 'This method is safe, reliable and more humane than the alternative,'' said Austin Sarat, a professor of law and politics at Amherst College. The search for a method that checks these boxes culminated with lethal injection. But about 15 years ago, states began losing access to the drugs they needed, causing them to use different drug combinations or seek a different method altogether. Idaho struggled for years to obtain pentobarbital, the drug it needed for executions, Rep. Bruce Skaug, the Republican lawmaker who sponsored HB 37, told CNN. But when it did manage to get the drug, it failed at its first attempted lethal injection in 12 years: In February 2024, executioners were unable to set an IV line on inmate Thomas Creech, forcing officials to abort the execution. 'Because of that failure,' Skaug said, 'this year, we decided to bring firing squad to the number one option.' 'Justice delayed is justice denied,' Skaug said, telling CNN the victims of the nine people on Idaho's death row deserve justice. The firing squad will allow Idaho to avoid the challenges presented by lethal injection, Skaug said. Crucially, he does not anticipate the state will have issues sourcing firearms and ammunition it needs, he said. 'But really, personally, I find it more humane,' he said. 'It's sudden, it's quick. I'm told by experts that the convicted person is instantly unconscious, and so that's really a humane way of death.' Indeed, the firing squad 'is thought to cause nearly instant unconsciousness,' Dr. Jonathan Groner, emeritus professor of clinical surgery at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, previously told CNN. Firing bullets into a person's heart 'would instantly stop the blood flow to the brain, which, like a cardiac arrest, causes rapid loss of brain function,' he said. In 1938, officials performed an electrocardiogram on a Utah inmate who was put to death by firing squad. A doctor said it showed his heart stopped beating 15 seconds after the bullet was fired, though the inmate was declared dead more than two minutes later, according to Associated Press reporting at the time. An Associated Press reporter who witnessed Sigmon's firing squad execution in South Carolina last month said it was 'much quicker' than those he had seen using lethal injection and the electric chair. 'The time from the shots being fired to the time death was declared was a little over two minutes,' Jeffrey Collins said. Sarat's research also suggests states are unlikely to stray from their own protocols during a firing squad execution. Critics call this circumstance a 'botched execution.' For his 2014 book, 'Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty,' Sarat reviewed nearly 9,000 executions carried out in the United States between 1900 and 2010. While he documented only 34 firing squad executions, it was the only method to boast a zero percent 'botch rate' within that time frame. Of the other methods – including electrocution, lethal gas and hanging – lethal injection had the highest botch rate of more than 7%. Still, states have remained averse to the firing squad, a position that experts who spoke to CNN believe stems from its overt violence. Writing for USA Today, Bo King, an attorney for Sigmon, wrote about seeing blood flow from a 'fist-sized hole' over his client's stomach before hearing the explosions of the three rifles used in his execution last month, leaving the lawyer 'sick with rage.' In this way, the firing squad is lethal injection's 'exact opposite,' said Lain, the University of Richmond law professor. 'Ending life before the body is ready to end it requires violence,' Lain told CNN. 'And the chief benefit of lethal injection is it hides it. The chief downside of the firing squad is that it shows it explicitly. It shows what the death penalty is, which is the state shedding blood in your name.' 'I think it is an explicit debasement of our society. It is an embrace of brutality,' she said of the firing squad. 'But if there is a bright side, perhaps it is that it will start some very important conversations about the death penalty that have been long standing but suppressed, because lethal injection has internalized that violence.' This sentiment echoes Sotomayor, who in her Glossip v. Gross dissent alluded to the potential apprehension states might have in carrying out executions by firing squad. 'The States may well be reluctant to pull back the curtain for fear of how the rest of us might react to what we see,' she wrote. 'But we deserve to know the price of our collective comfort before we blindly allow a State to make condemned inmates pay it in our names.' Skaug, the lawmaker, believes Idahoans will not be made uneasy by the firing squad. They're familiar with firearms, he said – for war and self-defense, but also as tools. And those facing execution, he added, 'carried out violent acts against other people … horrifically violent acts.' 'So, a bit of violence with bullets to the heart does not bother us, those that want to see this carried out.'
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Yahoo
South Carolina prepares for first firing squad execution, ushering return of rare method
The overhaul of South Carolina's death chamber was completed three years ago. Now, a team of sharpshooters is practicing its aim for what is poised to be the first firing squad execution in the state's history on Friday. Death by firing squad remains an extremely uncommon form of capital punishment in the United States, with only three carried out since the death penalty was ruled constitutional in 1976. All three occurred in Utah — the last in 2010, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. Brad Sigmon, the condemned South Carolina prisoner, opted for firing squad over the state's primary method of electrocution or the more widely used practice of lethal injection. 'He's made the best choice that he can, but the fact that he had to make it at all is horrifying,' said Sigmon's lawyer, Gerald 'Bo' King. Sigmon, 67, who was convicted in 2002 in the beating deaths of his ex-girlfriend's parents, declined lethal injection, King said, because of concerns over its use in the last three executions in South Carolina. In a filing last week asking the South Carolina Supreme Court to halt Sigmon's execution, his legal team noted the state's autopsy report for Marion Bowman Jr., who was put to death by lethal injection last month, indicates he was given '10 grams of pentobarbital' and 'died with his lungs massively swollen with blood and fluid,' akin to 'drowning.' That amount of pentobarbital is double what corrections officials had attested to needing under the state's lethal injection protocol, according to the filing. King argued that the state must disclose more information about the protocol and the quality of its pentobarbital on hand in order for Sigmon to have made a fair choice. State prosecutors said in a response Friday to Sigmon's filing that because he chose death by firing squad, he has 'waived any argument about lethal injection.' They also contend the second dose of pentobarbital was administered as outlined under the state's protocol and nothing was unusual with how the other inmates died. With Sigmon's execution drawing closer, barring a last-minute reprieve, the return of a firing squad execution is also raising questions about whether it is ushering a new — yet old — chapter in America's use of the death penalty. During the Civil War, firing squads were common for executing soldiers for desertion; in some cases, they would be blindfolded and tied to stakes before being shot. A century ago, Nevada executed a prisoner using an automated machine that fired the bullets so that no person had to. In the modern era of capital punishment, only a handful of states, including Mississippi and Oklahoma, allow for the method, with South Carolina legalizing it in 2021 and Idaho following two years later amid a nationwide shortage of lethal injection drugs. Corinna Barrett Lain, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said states are moving to the firing squad because lethal injection has been problematic, with reports of 'botched' incidents in recent years. 'States can't get the drugs. They can't get qualified medical professionals to do it,' Lain, the author of the upcoming book 'Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection,' said in an email. 'The firing squad is too honest, too explicit about what the death penalty is. People tend to think it's barbaric and archaic,' Lain said, adding: 'In that way, it may start some very important, and long overdue conversations about the death penalty in this country.' The last firing squad execution, in 2010, lasted about four minutes, from when the death chamber's curtain was lifted to when the bullets struck Utah inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner, according to media witnesses. Gardner, 49, was sentenced to death after fatally shooting an attorney, Michael Burdell, and wounding a bailiff, George Kirk, as he attempted to flee a courthouse in 1985. Gardner was already in custody for the killing of a bartender, Melvyn John Otterstrom, a year earlier. Prison staff members strapped Gardner to a chair, and after he declined to make a final statement, fit a black hood over his head. A small white target with a bull's-eye pattern was fastened to his chest. Five shooters — volunteers described as certified police officers — fired .30-caliber Winchester rifles from behind a wall with a gun port. The number of shooters helped to ensure one of the bullets was fatal, although one firearm was also fed a blank so that each shooter was uncertain who was directly responsible for the death, officials said. Media witnesses described Gardner appearing to flinch and move his arm after being shot, leaving them to wonder if he was still alive and would have to be shot again. But a medical examiner declared him dead a short time later, they said. Jennifer Dobner, who covered the execution for The Associated Press, said it was a 'very clinical and precise procedure.' Fifteen years later, she still recalls a 'boom, boom' from the rapid gunfire, then 'the target on his chest kind of blew up, the fabric kind of blew up,' and the room fell silent. The execution was traumatic for the Gardner family, she said. 'They have their own trauma from losing their brother this way. Not that they condone anything that he did, but it is a very extreme form of punishment,' Dobner said. Jamie Stewart, Kirk's granddaughter, witnessed Gardner's execution with her grandmother. Kirk died a decade after the shooting. Stewart said she initially thought the execution was going to be more gruesome. 'It's over really quick,' Stewart said in a text. 'It's not anything like I expected it to be.' To her, it was 'the most humane' way for Gardner to die, she said. 'Everyone thinks it's horrible to die this way, but how many botched firing squad executions have there been?' Gardner's death 'gave me closure,' she added. 'That monster finally paid for his crimes.' Gardner's brother Randy Gardner said none of his family witnessed the execution but he has since become an advocate against the death penalty. The method of his brother's death has haunted him, he said. 'I've gone through years and years of nightmares of me executing my mother in a wheelchair and executing my kids and my kids executing me,' Randy Gardner said. 'And, you know, after six, seven, eight years of that, I finally had to get a therapist.' Randy Gardner later saw his brother's body and also received graphic autopsy photos showing the extent of the wounds. His socks were soaked red from the blood. 'It's not going to be pretty in South Carolina,' Randy Gardner said. At the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, the shooters are volunteers employed by the Department of Corrections. Per officials, the three-person squad will fire rifles, all with live ammunition, from behind a wall about 15 feet from the inmate, who will be seated. Before the shooting, the inmate is allowed to make a last statement, then a hood is placed over his head and a target pinned over his heart. Bullet-resistant glass separates the chamber from another room where witnesses, including media, will be permitted. The department provides mental health support to staff members who are taking part in executions, said spokeswoman Chrysti Shain. D'Michelle DuPre, a forensic consultant in South Carolina and a former medical examiner, said 'botched' firing squad executions can be prevented as long as the shooters are properly trained. 'When your heart is struck with a bullet like this, you're immediately incapacitated,' DuPre said. 'There's relatively no pain. Everything is very quick.' 'If the heart is destroyed, it can't pump blood to your brain, and the brain is what keeps you conscious,' she said. Muscles may still contract, she added, but 'it's not a sign of life.' King said Sigmon has spent the past two decades in prison repenting, reading the Bible and praying. 'He's very devout, and that's been the organizing principle of his life ever since he went to death row,' King said. 'So he's continued on that course. He is, I would say, fearful about what is looming.' The execution chamber is located beside death row, and King said inmates 'have been treated to the unsettling experience of hearing a lot of gunfire.' 'They don't know if that's just folks practicing on the firing range, which is also very close to the row,' he added, 'or whether they're practicing for an execution.' This article was originally published on
NBC News
02-03-2025
- NBC News
South Carolina prepares for first firing squad execution, ushering return of rare method
The overhaul of South Carolina's death chamber was completed three years ago. Now, a team of sharpshooters is practicing its aim for what is poised to be the first firing squad execution in the state's history on Friday. Death by firing squad remains an extremely uncommon form of capital punishment in the United States, with only three carried out since the death penalty was ruled constitutional in 1976. All three occurred in Utah — the last in 2010, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. Brad Sigmon, the condemned South Carolina prisoner, opted for firing squad over the state's primary method of electrocution or the more widely used practice of lethal injection. 'He's made the best choice that he can, but the fact that he had to make it at all is horrifying,' said Sigmon's lawyer, Gerald 'Bo' King. Sigmon, 67, who was convicted in 2002 in the beating deaths of his ex-girlfriend's parents, declined lethal injection, King said, because of concerns over its use in the last three executions in South Carolina. In a filing last week asking the South Carolina Supreme Court to halt Sigmon's execution, his legal team noted the state's autopsy report for Marion Bowman Jr., who was put to death by lethal injection last month, indicates he was given '10 grams of pentobarbital' and 'died with his lungs massively swollen with blood and fluid,' akin to 'drowning.' That amount of pentobarbital is double what corrections officials had attested to needing under the state's lethal injection protocol, according to the filing. King argued that the state must disclose more information about the protocol and the quality of its pentobarbital on hand in order for Sigmon to have made a fair choice. State prosecutors said in a response Friday to Sigmon's filing that because he chose death by firing squad, he has 'waived any argument about lethal injection.' They also contend the second dose of pentobarbital was administered as outlined under the state's protocol and nothing was unusual with how the other inmates died. With Sigmon's execution drawing closer, barring a last-minute reprieve, the return of a firing squad execution is also raising questions about whether it is ushering a new — yet old — chapter in America's use of the death penalty. During the Civil War, firing squads were common for executing soldiers for desertion; in some cases, they would be blindfolded and tied to stakes before being shot. A century ago, Nevada executed a prisoner using an automated machine that fired the bullets so that no person had to. In the modern era of capital punishment, only a handful of states, including Mississippi and Oklahoma, allow for the method, with South Carolina legalizing it in 2021 and Idaho following two years later amid a nationwide shortage of lethal injection drugs. Corinna Barrett Lain, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said states are moving to the firing squad because lethal injection has been problematic, with reports of 'botched' incidents in recent years. 'States can't get the drugs. They can't get qualified medical professionals to do it,' Lain, the author of the upcoming book 'Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection,' said in an email. 'The firing squad is too honest, too explicit about what the death penalty is. People tend to think it's barbaric and archaic,' Lain said, adding: 'In that way, it may start some very important, and long overdue conversations about the death penalty in this country.' Utah's use of the firing squad The last firing squad execution, in 2010, lasted about four minutes, from when the death chamber's curtain was lifted to when the bullets struck Utah inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner, according to media witnesses. Gardner, 49, was sentenced to death after fatally shooting an attorney, Michael Burdell, and wounding a bailiff, George Kirk, as he attempted to flee a courthouse in 1985. Gardner was already in custody for the killing of a bartender, Melvyn John Otterstrom, a year earlier. Prison staff members strapped Gardner to a chair, and after he declined to make a final statement, fit a black hood over his head. A small white target with a bull's-eye pattern was fastened to his chest. Five shooters — volunteers described as certified police officers — fired .30-caliber Winchester rifles from behind a wall with a gun port. The number of shooters helped to ensure one of the bullets was fatal, although one firearm was also fed a blank so that each shooter was uncertain who was directly responsible for the death, officials said. Media witnesses described Gardner appearing to flinch and move his arm after being shot, leaving them to wonder if he was still alive and would have to be shot again. But a medical examiner declared him dead a short time later, they said. Jennifer Dobner, who covered the execution for The Associated Press, said it was a 'very clinical and precise procedure.' Fifteen years later, she still recalls a 'boom, boom' from the rapid gunfire, then 'the target on his chest kind of blew up, the fabric kind of blew up,' and the room fell silent. The execution was traumatic for the Gardner family, she said. 'They have their own trauma from losing their brother this way. Not that they condone anything that he did, but it is a very extreme form of punishment,' Dobner said. Jamie Stewart, Kirk's granddaughter, witnessed Gardner's execution with her grandmother. Kirk died a decade after the shooting. Stewart said she initially thought the execution was going to be more gruesome. 'It's over really quick,' Stewart said in a text. 'It's not anything like I expected it to be.' To her, it was 'the most humane' way for Gardner to die, she said. 'Everyone thinks it's horrible to die this way, but how many botched firing squad executions have there been?' Gardner's death 'gave me closure,' she added. 'That monster finally paid for his crimes.' Gardner's brother Randy Gardner said none of his family witnessed the execution but he has since become an advocate against the death penalty. The method of his brother's death has haunted him, he said. 'I've gone through years and years of nightmares of me executing my mother in a wheelchair and executing my kids and my kids executing me,' Randy Gardner said. 'And, you know, after six, seven, eight years of that, I finally had to get a therapist.' Randy Gardner later saw his brother's body and also received graphic autopsy photos showing the extent of the wounds. His socks were soaked red from the blood. 'It's not going to be pretty in South Carolina,' Randy Gardner said. What is planned in South Carolina At the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, the shooters are volunteers employed by the Department of Corrections. Per officials, the three-person squad will fire rifles, all with live ammunition, from behind a wall about 15 feet from the inmate, who will be seated. Before the shooting, the inmate is allowed to make a last statement, then a hood is placed over his head and a target pinned over his heart. Bullet-resistant glass separates the chamber from another room where witnesses, including media, will be permitted. The department provides mental health support to staff members who are taking part in executions, said spokeswoman Chrysti Shain. D'Michelle DuPre, a forensic consultant in South Carolina and a former medical examiner, said 'botched' firing squad executions can be prevented as long as the shooters are properly trained. 'When your heart is struck with a bullet like this, you're immediately incapacitated,' DuPre said. 'There's relatively no pain. Everything is very quick.' 'If the heart is destroyed, it can't pump blood to your brain, and the brain is what keeps you conscious,' she said. Muscles may still contract, she added, but 'it's not a sign of life.' King said Sigmon has spent the past two decades in prison repenting, reading the Bible and praying. 'He's very devout, and that's been the organizing principle of his life ever since he went to death row,' King said. 'So he's continued on that course. He is, I would say, fearful about what is looming.' The execution chamber is located beside death row, and King said inmates 'have been treated to the unsettling experience of hearing a lot of gunfire.' 'They don't know if that's just folks practicing on the firing range, which is also very close to the row,' he added, 'or whether they're practicing for an execution.'
