COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Supreme Court has announced that Brad Sigmon’s execution is scheduled for March 7, marking another event in the state’s recently reactivated death chamber.
On Friday, the court dismissed a motion from Sigmon’s legal team requesting a delay in the execution date until they received autopsy results for Marion Bowman, who was executed in a lethal injection last week. This marks the third execution in South Carolina since September.
Attorney representation for Sigmon indicated that they wished to understand whether Bowman received two doses of pentobarbital during his execution on January 31. The legal team also wanted time to review Bowman’s autopsy findings to enable Sigmon to make an informed decision regarding his preferred method of execution—be it lethal injection, electrocution, or a firing squad.
“With the information currently accessible to Mr. Sigmon, he cannot begin to evaluate, much less argue, which execution method is the more inhumane,” the attorneys stated in a court filing submitted on Wednesday.
At 67 years old, Sigmon was sentenced to death for the 2001 murders of his ex-girlfriend’s parents. He attacked both individuals with a baseball bat, moving between separate rooms in their Greenville home as he realized each was still alive, as per investigative reports.
Following the attacks, Sigmon kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, but she managed to flee from his vehicle. According to prosecutors, he fired at her during her escape but did not hit her.
In a confession transcribed by a detective post-arrest, Sigmon stated, “My intention was to kill her and then myself. That was my true plan all along. If I couldn’t have her, I wasn’t going to let anyone else have her. I understood it was getting to a point where I couldn’t have her.”
Sigmon will have a two-week window to determine his method of execution. If he does not make a choice by February 21, he will automatically face execution by electrocution. Notably, the firing squad has yet to be utilized, and the last execution by electrocution occurred in 2008.
After a 13-year hiatus from executions, South Carolina recommenced the practice last year, partly due to challenges in obtaining the necessary drugs for lethal injections. A shield law enacted in 2023 prohibits the public from knowing details about the drug suppliers, execution personnel, and their methodologies.
Legal representatives for Sigmon and other death row inmates have been persistently seeking transparency regarding the pentobarbital used in lethal injections and the procedures surrounding its administration.
State prison officials informed the pathologist conducting Richard Moore’s autopsy that he was given two substantial doses of pentobarbital within 11 minutes during his execution on November 1. A defense expert suggested that fluid found in Moore’s lungs could have caused feelings of conscious drowning and suffocation over the span of 23 minutes from the start of the execution to his official time of death.
However, a state-contracted anesthesiologist contended that it is common for lethal injection executions to result in fluid accumulation in the lungs, stressing that witness reports and other evidence indicated that Moore was likely unconscious within 30 seconds after receiving the first sedative dose.
Prison authorities have not clarified why Moore required a second substantial dose of the sedative or if administering dual doses is a standard procedure, referring to the shield law for justification. They have similarly withheld information on whether Bowman received two doses.
The first inmate executed after the reinstatement of capital punishment, Freddie Owens, declined an autopsy for religious reasons.
When South Carolina resumed executions in September, new protocols were established, switching from a three-drug lethal injection method to the use of pentobarbital exclusively. State officials indicated that these procedures are comparable to the sedative practices used in federal executions and in various other states.
Sigmon and two additional inmates have exhausted their appeals, and the state Supreme Court has indicated that they will stagger upcoming executions by at least five-week intervals. This spacing is intended to allow prison staff and defense attorneys, who represent multiple condemned clients, adequate time to address legal issues.
Since the U.S. reinstated the death penalty in 1976, South Carolina has executed 46 inmates. In the early 2000s, the state carried out an average of three executions annually, with nine states surpassing its numbers.
Nonetheless, due to the unintended moratorium on executions, the population on South Carolina’s death row has significantly declined. The state had 63 condemned inmates at the start of 2011, whereas it currently houses 29. Around 20 inmates have successfully appealed their sentences, resulting in new penalties, while others have passed away from natural causes.
