Father Of The Firing Squad?

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Last Friday afternoon, the State of South Carolina – having subsidized three hots and a cot for convicted killer Brad Sigmon for the past twenty-three years – fed him four pieces of fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes, biscuits and gravy and cheesecake for dessert. He drank sweet tea.

Moments later, they dressed him in black, pinned a target to his chest, put a hood over his head and strapped him into a metal chair. At 6:05 p.m. EST, a trio of rifles hidden from behind a brick wall emerged and pumped multiple .308 Winchester TAP URBAN rounds – which fragment upon impact – into the bullseye at the center of the target covering his chest.

The target – and his chest – were obliterated.

When the firing stopped, S.C. Department of Corrections (SCDC) officials conducted an examination of Sigmon. At 6:08 p.m. EST, the 67-year-old killer was pronounced dead – the first person put to death by firing squad in the United States since Ronnie Lee Gardner in Utah fifteen years earlier.

Sigmon’s final statement bemoaned the death penalty – asking “fellow Christians” to band together to eradicate it. He described the “eye for an eye” mentality underlying it as a product of the Old Testament.

Sigmon’s victims – William David Larke and Gladys Gwendolyn Larke – weren’t treated to such a generous, taxpayer-funded repas for their last meal. Nor were they given any choice regarding how they met their maker. Sigmon took that choice away from them on April 27, 2001 when he broke into their home armed with a baseball bat and proceeded to bludgeon the two of them to death.

Both Larkes sustained nine blows to the head from Sigmon’s bat – their skulls literally caved in by his drug-induced rage. The coked up killer also tried to murder their daughter, his ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Barbare.

A jury of Sigmon’s peers found him guilty of both murders… and sentenced him to death.

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Every execution is accompanied by calls for clemency… but in Sigmon’s case, those calls were understandably muted. And the ones that got through rang hollow.

The road to Sigmon’s execution – or rather his method of execution – began six years ago when S.C. first circuit solicitor David Pascoe suggested the Palmetto State should incorporate the firing squad into its capital punishment mix. Lawmakers listened, and a bill was introduced to do just that.

Similar legislation had been introduced in 2015, but it failed to attract any support beyond its lone sponsor – former GOP state representative Joshua Putnam. When Pascoe started beating the drum, though, the ball started moving.

Things were dramatically different in South Carolina in 2019. At the time, prosecutors and judges were consistently failing to hold violent criminals accountable for their actions – rewarding their repetitive bad behavior with lenient bonds, sweetheart plea deals and anemic sentences. As for crime victims and their rights? Those had gone completely out the window… abandoned by the “justice” system as well as the lawyer-legislator politicians and woke media upholding it.

Thankfully, prosecutors like Pascoe and S.C. sixteenth circuit solicitor Kevin Brackett teamed up with FITSNews and mounted a renewed push aimed at holding the system accountable for its outcomes. Working with newly elected members of the S.C. General Assembly, this upstart coalition confronted the corruption – challenging the way judges are selected in the Palmetto State while insisting on tougher bonds, pleas and sentences.

While some progress has been made on these fronts, much more progress is required.

This media outlet has also steadfastly championed the expansion of capital punishment – both the frequency with which it is implemented and its methods of implementation.

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“There’s no point having a debate over the efficacy of capital punishment if it is only going to be carried out once a year using the most genteel of methods,” I wrote in an expansive editorial on criminal justice reform nearly a decade ago.  “There’s simply nothing to debate under these circumstances except that killing someone in America (has become) a ticket to stardom and ‘three hots and a cot’ for life courtesy of the taxpayers.”

This was especially true in South Carolina, where executions by lethal injection – the only method permitted by the courts – were put on hold beginning in 2011 when the state could no longer obtain the chemicals needed to administer them.

The death penalty became a charade – an empty threat. Three years ago, S.C. circuit court judge Jocelyn Newman issued a ruling which blocked all executions in the state while the constitutionality of the new proposed methods – including the firing squad – were debated. On July 31, 2024, the S.C. supreme court overturned Newman’s ruling – allowed SCDC to conduct executions via all three methods. In the event a condemned inmate were to decline to make a choice, “the penalty must be administered by electrocution.”

In the aftermath of the court’s ruling, convicted killer Freddie Eugene Owens was executed by lethal injection on September 20, 2024 for the 1997 murder of 41-year-old convenience store clerk Irene Graves. This was the first execution administered by the state in more than thirteen years. Two additional executions were carried out by lethal injection on November 1, 2024 and January 31, 2025 prior to Sigmon’s execution last Friday.

As of this writing, there are 29 prisoners on South Carolina’s death row.

The Palmetto State provides for the death penalty in murder cases where a “statutory aggravating circumstance is found beyond a reasonable doubt.” These circumstances are specifically enumerated in the S.C. Code of Laws (§ 16-3-20) – and are determined on a case-by-case basis in proceedings held separately from the murder trial once a guilty plea or verdict has been entered into the record.

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RELATED | LINE. THEM. UP.

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If a defendant in a capital case pleads guilty before trial, a circuit court judge sets his or her sentence. If they are found guilty by a jury of their peers during a public trial, then the decision is made by the same trial jury which heard the original case. Like the original determination of a defendant’s guilt, any aggravating factors presented to that jury must be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt” for the death penalty to be imposed.

And like the verdict, the jury’s death penalty decision must be unanimous.

There are twelve aggravating factors listed under the law – although the first factor encapsulates eleven separate crimes which, if committed alongside murder, would elevate the latter charge to a capital case. Those crimes include criminal sexual conduct, kidnapping, human trafficking, burglary, robbery (while armed with a deadly weapon), larceny (with the use of a deadly weapon), drug trafficking, poisoning, torturing, dismemberment and arson.

The other aggravating factors deal specifically with the defendant, his or her victims, the crime itself and the motive for committing it. For example, individuals previously convicted of murder are subject to the death penalty – as are killers deemed to be “sexually violent predators.” The same goes for attempting mass murder, murdering for money (or something of value) and murdering two or more people as part of the same “scheme or course of conduct.” Also, if a murder victim is under eleven years old, a witness in a trial, an officer of the court, a law enforcement officer or first responder (or the family member of a court officer or law enforcement official), the death penalty can be sought.

Frankly, there are other crimes and aggravating factors which ought to be codified – as well as other methods of execution which ought to be authorized.

Even without strengthening the law, though, there are plenty of applicable scenarios in which capital cases could be brought against violent killers… meaning it’s time for prosecutors to start pushing for the death penalty far more often (and time for the courts to start moving these cases through the system far more quickly).

Critics of the death penalty are correct: It has not been a deterrent to violent crime.

It’s time to make it one…

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.

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