Condemned Murderer May Be First Person in 15 Years to Be Executed by Firing Squad in U.S.

A South Carolina inmate on death row has chosen to be executed by firing squad.

Brad Sigmon’s execution is scheduled for March 7 for the 2001 baseball bat killings of his ex-girlfriend’s parents in Greenville County, per the Associated Press and USA Today.

According to the outlets, after killing David and Gladys Larke, Sigmon kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint. Although he shot at her after she escaped his moving vehicle, she survived.

If carried out, Sigmon will be the first person in South Carolina to be executed by firing squad after the state’s Supreme Court made it legal in July 2024.

A South Carolina tri­al court had previously issued an injunction pre­vent­ing the state from car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions by fir­ing squad or the elec­tric chair in 2022 after it had been legalized in 2021, per the Death Penalty Information Center.

Sigmon will also be the first person to be executed by firing squad in the U.S. since Ronnie Gardner chose the method 15 years ago on June 17, 2010.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the execution method involves a person being bound to a chair with a black hood placed over their head. “Standing in an enclo­sure 20 feet away, five shoot­ers are armed with .30 cal­iber rifles loaded with sin­gle rounds,” the organization states, adding that one shooter is given blank rounds.

Friday, Feb. 21 was Sigmon’s deadline to choose his execution method, which could have been a lethal injection or the electric chair (the default method if he had not selected it), per WCSC-TV.

His lawyers had initially asked for his execution date to be pushed back to give them time to look over the autopsy of Marion Bowman, who was executed by lethal injection on Jan. 31. They wanted to see if Bowman had been given two doses of pentobarbital, the Associated Press reported. The delay request was denied.

According to the Associated Press and WCSC-TV, Gerald “Bo” King, a Federal Public Defender and one of Sigmon’s attorneys, said Sigmon chose execution by firing squad because if he “chose lethal injection, he risked the prolonged death suffered by all three of the men South Carolina has executed since September—three men Brad knew and cared for—who remained alive, strapped to a gurney, for more than twenty minutes.”

King allegedly saw the firing squad as his “only choice.”

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.   

“Brad has no illusions about what being shot will do to his body. He does not wish to inflict that pain on his family, the witnesses, or the execution team,” King said. “But, given South Carolina’s unnecessary and unconscionable secrecy, Brad is choosing as best he can.”

Sigmon will be executed at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, S.C., where he is being held, bar any last-minute appears, a spokesperson for King told NBC News.