As questions persist about SC’s lethal injection, court schedules fourth person for death
A date has been set for a man who would become the second person executed by South Carolina this year.
Brad Sigmon, who beat his ex-girlfriend’s parents to death with a baseball bat, is scheduled to be executed in the state’s death chamber on March 7.
Sigmon, 67, would be the oldest person executed in South Carolina and fourth person killed since the state resumed executions last year following a 13-year pause. His scheduled execution comes as legal challenges continue against the state’s secretive lethal injection protocol.
The temporary halt in executions was caused by the state’s inability to procure the drugs required to perform the lethal injection.
Friday’s execution notice from the South Carolina Supreme Court to corrections Director Bryan Stirling comes the day after the South Carolina Supreme Court declined to issue a stay of execution.
Sigmon’s attorneys asked that the execution notice not be issued until they had time to review the autopsy report for Marion Bowman Jr., the most recent person executed.
South Carolina law requires inmates to select their method of execution from three options: firing squad, electrocution or lethal injection. But attorneys for Sigmon and others facing execution have argued that the state has not provided enough information about lethal injection for people on death row to ensure that if they choose that option, they will not face unconstitutional levels of pain and suffering.
“With the information currently available to Mr. Sigmon, he cannot begin to assess, much less contend, which method is the more inhumane,” his attorneys wrote in their motion.
A “shield law” passed in South Carolina makes it illegal to disclose information about the state’s lethal injection protocol, including how the drugs are sourced and stored as well as how the process is performed and by who.
An autopsy of Richard Moore, who was executed in November, revealed that he had fluid in his lungs, a sign of pulmonary edema. This “excruciating condition... causes the sensation of drowning,” according to Sigmon’s attorneys.
While the limited public information available from the Department of Corrections indicates that the lethal injection is performed by a “single dose” of pentobarbital (a powerful sedative that can cause death by asphyxiation), Moore received a second dose of pentobarbital ten minutes after the first one, according to court filings.
The use of the double dose raises concerns that the drugs were not properly administered or are not reliable and effective, Sigmon’s attorneys said.
Asked about the Department of Correction’s protocol and how many doses were used in previous executions, department spokesperson Chrysti Shain told The State, “our written protocol mirrors the one that is used by the federal Bureau of Prisons. I am not at all confirmed anything about specifics other than to confirm that we followed our protocol.”
Who is Brad Sigmon?
Sigmon was sentenced to death in 2001 for the murder of Gladys and David Larke, the parents of his ex-girlfriend. He was convicted of beating them to death with a baseball bat, going back and forth between separate rooms of their Greenville home to continue the attack when he realized that they were still alive.
He then abducted his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint and shot at her when she escaped his car. He told investigators that he had planned to kill her and himself.
One of Sigmon’s lawyers, Gerald “Bo” King, chief of the Capital Habeas Unit for the Fourth Circuit Federal Public Defender’s Office, said that Sigmon is “deeply remorseful” and “works every day to atone for the deaths of Gladys and David Larke.”
“After a childhood of physical abuse and neglect, Brad succumbed to a severe, inherited mental illness. At that time, his condition went undiagnosed and untreated. The nature of the crime and his behavior at trial was the product of this disorder,” King said in a statement.
Sigmon is also represented by attorney Joshua Kendrick from the Kendrick and Leonard Law Firm.
Sigmon will be the first white person executed since executions resumed, and the first person to be convicted of killing more than one person.