United States: a condemned man is to be put to death by firing squad, a first since 2010

A death row inmate in the southeastern U.S. state of South Carolina is scheduled to be put to death by firing squad on Friday, a first in the country since 2010.

Five executions were carried out in the USA in 2025, four by lethal injection and one by nitrogen inhalation in Alabama (south-east), the state that inaugurated this hitherto unprecedented and controversial method in January 2024, compared by UN experts to a form of “torture”. But another southern state, Louisiana, will resume executions after a 15-year hiatus, also using nitrogen inhalation on March 18.

South Carolina authorities set an execution date a month ago for Brad Sigmon, 67, who was sentenced to death in 2002 for beating his ex-girlfriend's parents, David and Gladys Larke, to death with a baseball bat before attempting to kidnap her. State law makes the electric chair the default mode of execution, but allows the condemned man the alternative of death by firing squad or lethal injection.

The three previous convicts executed in South Carolina since September - after a hiatus of more than 13 years - all opted for lethal injection. But Brad Sigmon opted for the firing squad, in desperation, according to his lawyers. One of them, Gerald King, denounced an “impossible choice” between “the archaic South Carolina electric chair, which would burn him alive”, and “equally monstrous alternatives”. The South Carolina Department of Corrections officially announced in 2022 that its execution chamber was now ready for a firing squad. This will be the fourth death by firing squad in the USA in the last 65 years, according to attorney Gerald King. The last, in Utah (west), was in 2010.