By james art 
Columbia, SC (AP) – a convicted prisoner by South Carolina Brad Sigmon has chosen to die next month by a fired squad, a method of execution that has not been used in the United States for 15 years.
Sigmon is expected to die on March 7th. On Friday, he became the first prisoner in South Carolina to choose the new country’s unit due to a deadly injection or electric chair.
Only three prisoners in the United States have been executed since 1976. All were in Utah, with the latter being held in 2010.
The 67 -year -old Sigmon will be attached to a chair and there will be a hood over his head and a target placed over his heart in the camera of death. Three volunteers will shoot at it through a small opening about 15 feet (4.6 meters).
Sigmon’s lawyers wanted to delay the date of performance earlier this month because they wanted to learn whether the prisoner in the previous execution of South Carolina, Marion Bauman, received two doses of Pentobarbital in his execution on January 31 and examined his autopsy report.
The judges rejected his delay and the court records on Friday did not indicate whether Sigmon’s lawyers still received the Bauman autopsy report.
Sigmon did not choose the electric chair because it will “burn and prepare it alive,” his lawyer Gerald “Bo” King wrote in a statement.
“But the alternative is just as monstrous,” King said. “If he chose a deadly injection, he risked the prolonged death, suffered by all three men, whom South Carolina had executed in September – three men who knew and cared – who remained alive, attached to Gurney for more than twenty minutes. “
Sigmon said South Carolina, who kept so secret about how he had deadly injections, made him decide what he knew would be a violent death, his lawyer said.
“He does not want to inflict this pain to his family, witnesses or the execution team. But given the unnecessary and undoubted secret of South Carolina, Brad chooses as well as possible, “King said.
Sigmon was convicted of killing a baseball bat since 2001 by his ex -girlfriend’s parents at their home in Greenville County. They were in separate rooms, and Sigmon walked backwards, as they beat them to death, the investigators said. He then abducted his ex -girlfriend in shooting, but she ran out of his car. He fired at her as she was running, but missed, according to prosecutors.
In recognition, Sigmon said, “I couldn’t have it, I wouldn’t let anyone else have it.”
Sigmon will be the oldest of 46 prisoners in South Carolina, who have been executed after restarting the death penalty in the United States in 1976.
Sigmon’s lawyers have one last complaint, asking the State Supreme Court to suspend his execution so that hearing on their arguments could be held that Sigmon’s court attorneys were inexperienced and failed, failing to stop his statement In front of the jurors or fully bringing their mental illness or the rude family of life as a child before the jurors when they asked for mercy.
Sigmon’s last chance to spare his life can hide with the request of Republican governor Henry McMaster to reduce his sentence to life without conditional release.
His attorneys told him that he was a prisoner, reliable by guards who works daily to buy the killings he had committed after succumbing to a serious mental illness. They said that his performance would only send the announcement that South Carolina declined to recognize the redemption.
No governor of South Carolina has provided pardon in 49 years since the restart of the death penalty.
South Carolina spent about $ 54,000 in 2022, building an area for firing in his death camera. It will not be far from the electric chair.
The witness window is mounted by Bulletproof glass, a chair with a pool below it for capture is in place and a wall was built to allow the shooters to stand behind. Witnesses will see the profile of the prisoner, but not the squad.
The state legislature approved the fired unit after prison staff could not receive the medicines needed for deadly injections as suppliers refused to sell them if they were publicly known. The Privacy Shield Act was adopted later, but the squad remains in the books.
Sigmon’s attorneys said he had chosen a deadly injection due to the circumstances of the three previous executions, as the state switched to the use of a massive dose of Pentobarbital. While witnesses said the three convicted prisoners seem to have stopped breathing and moving in a few minutes, they were not declared dead for at least 20 minutes.
The autopsy report was published only on one of the executions: Richard Moore, to whom prison staff claim to have received two large doses of sedative pentobarbital at 11 minutes on November 1.
Freddie Owens, the first prisoner killed with the new protocols, refused autopsy for religious reasons.
Sigmon’s lawyers said Moore’s autopsy showed unusual amounts of fluid in his lungs and expert suggested that he could feel he was drowning
The lawyers of the state said the fluid was not unusual for the executions of a large dose of Pentobarbital and said witnesses said prisoners killed in South Carolina had been conscious and breathe about a minute after the start of the executions.