The review of the South Carolina Death Chamber was completed three years ago. Now, a sniper team is practicing its goal of what is about to be the first execution of the shooting squad in the history of the state on Friday.
Death by the firing squad remains an extremely rare form of capital in the United States, with only three carried out since the death penalty declared itself constitutional in 1976. The three occurred in Utah, the last one in 2010, according to the non -profit death penalty information center.
Brad Sigmon, the sentenced prisoner of South Carolina, opted for the shots squad on the main electrocution method of the state or the most used practice of lethal injection.
“He has made the best decision he can, but the fact that he had to do it is horrible,” said Sigmon’s lawyer, Gerald “Bo” King.
Sigmon, 67, who was sentenced in 2002 for the beating of his ex -girlfriend’s parents, rejected lethal injection, King said, due to concerns about his use in the last three executions in South Carolina.
In a presentation last week asking the Supreme Court of South Carolina to stop the execution of Sigmon, his legal team indicated the state autopsy report for Marion Bowman Jr., who was killed by lethal injection last month, indicates that he received “10 grams of Pentobarbital” and “died with his mass lungs with blood and fluid”, Akin a “gram”.
This amount of pentobarbital is twice what correction officials had crowded the need for the state lethal injection protocol, according to the presentation.
King argued that the State must reveal more information about the protocol and the quality of its pentobarbital that is applied so that Sigmon has made a fair decision.
State prosecutors said in a response on Friday to Sigmon’s presentation that because he chose death to the execution squad, “he resigned from any argument about lethal injection.” They also argue that the second dose of Pentobarbital was administered as described under the state protocol and nothing was unusual with the way the other inmates died.
With the execution of Sigmon approaching, except for a last minute relief, the return of a shooting squad is also asking questions about whether it is marking a new, but old start, in the use of the death penalty by the United States.
During the civil war, the execution squads were common to execute soldiers for dropout; In some cases, they would be blindfolded and tied to the stakes before being shot. A century ago, Nevada executed a prisoner using an automated machine that fired the bullets so that no person had to do it.
In the modern era of capital punishment, only a handful of states, including Mississippi and Oklahoma, allow the method, with South Carolina legalizing it in 2021 and Idaho after two years later in the middle of a national shortage of lethal injection drugs.
Corinna Barrett Lain, a professor at the Law School of the University of Richmond, said that the states are moving to the execution team because the lethal injection has been problematic, with reports of “failed” incidents in recent years.
“States cannot obtain drugs. They cannot get qualified medical professionals to do it, “LAIN, the author of the next book” Secrets of the murder state: the unlocked history of lethal injection, “he said in an email.
“The shooting team is too honest, too explicit about what is the death penalty. People tend to think that they are barbaric and archaic, “said Lain, added:” That way, they can start some very important and long conversations about the death penalty in this country. “
The use of UTAH of the Shot Squad
The last execution of the Shots Squadron, in 2010, lasted about four minutes, since the death chamber curtain was built when the bullets hit the Utah Ronnie Lee Gardner inmate, according to media witnesses.
Gardner, 49, was sentenced to death after fatally shooting a lawyer, Michael Burdell, and hurting a sheriff, George Kirk, while trying to flee from a court in 1985. Gardner was already in custody for the murder of a waiter, Melvyn John Otterstrom, a year earlier.
The prison staff members tied Gardner to a chair, and after he refused to make a final statement, he adjusted to a black hood on his head. A small white target with a bull eye pattern was attached to his chest. Five shooters, volunteers described as certified police officers, fired.
The number of shooters helped to ensure that one of the bullets was fatal, although a firearm also fed blank so that each shooter was uncertain who was directly responsible for death, authorities said.
The witnesses of the media described that Gardner appeared to shudder and move his arm after receiving a shot, letting them wonder if he was still alive and would have to be shot again. But a forensic doctor declared him dead shortly after, they said.
Jennifer Dobner, who covered the execution of Associated Press, said it was a “very clinical and precise procedure.” Fifteen years later, she still remembers a “boom, boom” of the fast shots, then “the goal in her chest exploded, the fabric exploded”, and the room was silent. The execution was traumatic for the Gardner family, he said.
“They have their own trauma for losing their brother in this way. It is not that they condon everything he did, but it is a very extreme form of punishment, ”said Dobner.
Jamie Stewart, Kirk’s granddaughter, witnessed Gardner’s execution with her grandmother. Kirk died a decade after the shooting.
Stewart said he initially thought that the execution was going to be more horrible.
“It’s over very fast,” Stewart said in a text message. “It’s nothing as I expected to be.”
For her, it was “the most human form” for Gardner to die, he said. “Everyone thinks that it is horrible to die in this way, but how many executions of failed shots squad have there?”
Gardner’s death “closed me,” he added. “That monster finally paid for their crimes.”
Gardner’s brother, Randy Gardner, said that none of his family witnessed the execution, but since then he has become a defender of the death penalty.
His brother’s death method has persecuted him, he said.
“I have gone through years and years of nightmares of me executing my mother in a wheelchair and executing my children and my children who executed me,” said Randy Gardner. “And, you know, after six, seven, eight years of that, I finally had to get a therapist.”
Randy Gardner then saw her brother’s body and also received photos of graphic autopsy showing the extension of the wounds. His socks were soaked with red blood.
“It won’t be pretty in South Carolina,” Randy Gardner said.
What is planned in South Carolina
In the wide correctional institution of the river in Columbia, the shooters are volunteers used by the Department of Corrections. According to the officials, the three -people team will shoot rifles, all with live ammunition, from behind a wall about 15 feet of the inmate, which will sit.
Before the shooting, the inmate is allowed to make a last statement, then a hood is placed on his head and a goal is held on his heart. Glass resistant to bullets separates the camera from another room where witnesses will be allowed, including the media.
The department provides mental health support to personnel members participating in executions, said spokeswoman Chrysti Shain.
D’A the Michelle Dupre, a Forensic consultant in South Carolina and former Forensic, said that the executions of “failed” shooting can be prevented while the shooters are correctly trained.
“When your heart is beaten with a bullet like this, you are immediately incapacitated,” Dupre said. “There is no relatively pain. Everything is very fast. “
“If the heart is destroyed, you cannot pump your brain, and the brain is what keeps you aware,” he said. The muscles can still contract, he added, but “it is not a sign of life.”
King said that Sigmon has spent the last two decades in prison regretting, reading the Bible and praying.
“He is very devout, and that has been the organizing principle of his life since he went to the death corridor,” King said. “Then he has continued in that course. He is, he would say, fearful of what is coming. ”
The execution chamber is next to the death corridor, and King said that the inmates “have been treated with the disturbing experience of hearing many shots.”
“They don’t know if that is only people who practice in the shooting field, which is also very close to row,” he added, “or if they are practicing for execution.”
