A South Carolina The prisoners of the death cell have chosen to be executed by a shooting team, so that he would only be the fourth prisoner in the US to die from this implementation method.
Brad Sigmon, 67, who will be killed on March 7, informed state officials on Friday that he wants to die from a resource team instead of a fatal injection or the electric chair, which partly quoted the long -term suffering of the three prisoners in the state earlier Executed when they were killed by fatal injection.
Sigmon was the first prisoner in South Carolina who chose a shooting team. Since 1976, only three prisoners have been performed in the US and were all in Utah, with the last 15 years ago being performed.
In the death room, Sigmon will be tied to a chair and a hood over his head and a target over his heart. Three shooters will shoot at him through a small opening at about 15 feet distance.
Brad Sigmon was convicted of killing the parents of his alienated girlfriend in Greenville County in 2001. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
Sigmon lawyers asked to postpone his implementation date earlier this month because they were looking for information about whether the last prisoner who executed the state, Marion Bowman, was given two doses of the sedative pentobarbital during his execution on January 31. It is unclear whether Sigmon’s is or Sigmon’s lawyers have received the Bowman autopsy report that they had requested, together with additional information about the deadly injection medication.
Justices have refused the request for a deferred execution.
Sigmon was convicted in the base beam cords in 2001 of the parents of his ex-girlfriend in their house in Greenville County. The two were in separate rooms, said researchers, and Sigmon went back and forth between the rooms while he both beat them.
After PairSigmon kidnapped his ex-girlfriend, but she managed to escape from his car. He shot her down while she walked away but missed.
“I couldn’t have her, I would not let anyone else have her,” he said in a confession.
Sigmon’s lawyers now have a final appeal and ask the State Supreme Court to stop his execution in order to allow a hearing about their claims that his process lawyers had no experience and did not fail because of his statement to the jury to stop or bring its mental illness or rough family life full as a child for the jury.
After the last appeal, the last chance of Sigmon can save his life, the Republican government Henry McMaster asks to reduce his sentence without conditional release, but no governor of South Carolina has in the 49 years since the resumed resumed death penalty granted.
This photo supplied by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the death room of the state in Columbia, South Carolina, including the electric chair, right, and a chair of the shooting team, left. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
The state legislator The shooting team approved after prison officials had difficulty obtaining deadly injection drugs because of the concern of pharmaceutical companies that they should reveal that they had sold the medicines to state officials. The state legislator then approved the Shield Act, so that officials could keep suppliers of fatal injections private, but the shooting team remained an option.
Lawyers for Sigmon said that he chose fatal injection due to concern about the three previous executions since the state resumed the death penalty in September after a 13-year-old involuntary break and moved to the use of a massive dose of Pentobarbital. Witnesses of the three previous executions said that despite the fact that the men seemed to stop breathing and moving in just a few minutes, they were not declared dead for at least 20 minutes.
Sigmon did not select the electric chair because it “would burn and cook alive,” said his lawyer, Gerald “Bo” King, in a statement.
“The choice that Brad encountered today was impossible,” wrote King. “Unless he chose deadly injection or the shooting team, he would die in the old electric chair of South Carolina, which would burn and cook alive. But the alternative is just as monstrous.”
“If he opted for fatal injection, he risked the long -term death of all three men who has executed South Carolina since September – three men who knew Brad and cared for – who stayed alive, tied to a stretcher, more than twenty minutes. At least one requirement a second, massive dose of pentobarbital before his heart stopped and he died with his lungs swollen with Liquid, “he continued.
South Carolina kept information secret about how the deadly injections performs, led him to decide on the shooting team, which he acknowledges that it will be a violent death, said his lawyer.
“The only choice that remained is the shooting team. Brad has no illusions about what his body will do with his body,” said King. “He does not want to inflict that pain to his family, the witnesses or the execution team. But given the unnecessary and uninhabitable confidentiality of South Carolina, Brad chooses as well as possible.”
The room where prisoners are performed in Columbus, South Carolina. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
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The autopsy report has been released for just one of the executions. Prison officials said that Richard Moore got two large doses of Pentobarbital 11 minutes apart on 1. Sigmon’s lawyers said that Moore’s autopsy showed unusual quantities of liquids in his lungs, and an expert suggested that he might have felt like he had been consciously drowning and stiffened During the 23 minutes it took before he was pronounced dead.
Lawyers for the State said that the liquid is not unusual for executions by a large dose of pentobarbital and witnesses told that the prisoners who have been executed in the state so far have only been aware and started about a minute after the trial.
There was no autopsy after the performance of Freddie Owens on 20 September at his request, with reference to religious reasons because of his Muslim belief.
South Carolina has executed 46 prisoners since the death penalty resumed in the US in 1976. In the early 2000s, the state performed an average of three executions per year. Only nine states have killed more prisoners.
The Associated Press has contributed to this report.
