Death By Firing Squad
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https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/south-carolina/article301532504.html
Just after 6:05 p.m. inside of the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, the silence of the state’s death chamber was broken by the crack of three unseen rifles and blood spurted from the chest of Brad Sigmon.
He is the first person in South Carolina to have been executed by firing squad and only the fourth in the entire country to have been executed by firing squad since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed executions to resume in 1976.
At 67 years, Sigmon is the oldest person ever executed in the state of South Carolina.
His death by firing squad comes 23 years after he was convicted in the brutal murders of David and Gladys Larke and more than a decade into a battle over the method used to carry out the death penalty in South Carolina. A survivor of an abusive and unsettled childhood, Sigmon’s attorneys said that he beat the Larkes to death with a baseball bat following a night of drinking and crack cocaine use while under the delusional belief that he could reunite with his ex-girlfriend, the Larkes’ daughter.
Media witnesses to the execution — Jeffery Collins from the Associated Press, Tiffany Tan from The Post and Courier and Anna Dobbis with WYFF News 4 — reported that just after 6 p.m., the death chamber’s curtain was pulled back to reveal Sigmon strapped down in a metal chair.
Straps ran across his chest, his legs were shackled and his arms were pinned by his side. His jaw was held in place with a sling but through the bulletproof glass separating the witnesses from the death chamber he appeared to mouth to his attorney, Gerald “Bo” King, that he was “OK.”
For his last meal, Sigmon requested four pieces of fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes, bisuits and gravy, cheesecake and sweet tea.
Instead of the typical green jumpsuit worn by inmates at the Department of Corrections, Sigmon was dressed in a black jumpsuit and black plastic shoes. A white rectangular target with a red bullseye was pinned to his chest.
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Wouldn't it be quicker and more reliable to shoot both the chest and the brain? I assume if you shoot just the chest you still have a few seconds whereas a bullet through the head should be immediate, no?
@Klaus said in Death By Firing Squad:
Wouldn't it be quicker and more reliable to shoot both the chest and the brain? I assume if you shoot just the chest you still have a few seconds whereas a bullet through the head should be immediate, no?
Brain is a smaller target. People get nervous when killing another human and the last thing you want is some guy screaming with his ear blown off...Of course, we could do it like the Chinese and just use a pistol shot to the back of the head at powder burn range.
Also, the body is the family's property after the execution. A rifle round can do some interesting things to a skull...It would take a first class undertaker to reconstruct that...
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Well, consider this: Thousands of people commit suicide by blowing their brain out. But I've never heard of suicide by shooting in the chest. There must be a reason...
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Well, consider this: Thousands of people commit suicide by blowing their brain out. But I've never heard of suicide by shooting in the chest. There must be a reason...
@Klaus said in Death By Firing Squad:
Well, consider this: Thousands of people commit suicide by blowing their brain out. But I've never heard of suicide by shooting in the chest. There must be a reason...
Women often shoot themselves in the chest. Don't want to mess up their face for the casket.
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Nitrogen. Best way.
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it's not that easy to aim a handgun into your chest. much easier to the side of the head or up ones mouth. If I had to choose between the three, after hearing some real horror stories on lethal injection, firing squad would be an easy pick for me. And fuggedabout electric chair. Their is no instantaneous death with that one.
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@Mik said in Death By Firing Squad:
Any way you cut it it's a grisly, unnatural business. We'd be best off without it.
And it’s cheaper to just imprison them for life without parole.
The Brad
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Well, consider this: Thousands of people commit suicide by blowing their brain out. But I've never heard of suicide by shooting in the chest. There must be a reason...
@Klaus said in Death By Firing Squad:
Well, consider this: Thousands of people commit suicide by blowing their brain out. But I've never heard of suicide by shooting in the chest. There must be a reason...
A childhood friend of mine who became a cop shot himself in the chest. Presumably he did it so him mom could have an open casket funeral.
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@Mik said in Death By Firing Squad:
Any way you cut it it's a grisly, unnatural business. We'd be best off without it.
And it’s cheaper to just imprison them for life without parole.
@LuFins-Dad said in Death By Firing Squad:
And it’s cheaper to just imprison them for life without parole.
Agree. Death penalty is not stopping anybody from dong bad crimes.
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@LuFins-Dad said in Death By Firing Squad:
And it’s cheaper to just imprison them for life without parole.
Agree. Death penalty is not stopping anybody from dong bad crimes.
@taiwan_girl said in Death By Firing Squad:
@LuFins-Dad said in Death By Firing Squad:
And it’s cheaper to just imprison them for life without parole.
Agree. Death penalty is not stopping anybody from dong bad crimes.
I beg to differ. Dead people do not commit crimes of any kind.
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@taiwan_girl said in Death By Firing Squad:
@LuFins-Dad said in Death By Firing Squad:
And it’s cheaper to just imprison them for life without parole.
Agree. Death penalty is not stopping anybody from dong bad crimes.
I beg to differ. Dead people do not commit crimes of any kind.
@Jolly said in Death By Firing Squad:
I beg to differ. Dead people do not commit crimes of any kind.
Hmm, Someone smarter than I could do a data analysis to show that death penalty does not result and any change in (violent?) crime rate.
I am not against the death penalty, but to say that a reason to have it is because it prevents crime I dont believe is true. I think that the reason people want to have it is for "revenge", which I can understand.
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I think I'm the only one here that routinely visited jails and prisons.
Cruel is a life in prison.
By the time you die, nobody cares or wants you. They put you in a cardboard box and bury you in the pauper's field with a number tag or in the prison graveyard.
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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I think I'm the only one here that routinely visited jails and prisons.
Cruel is a life in prison.
By the time you die, nobody cares or wants you. They put you in a cardboard box and bury you in the pauper's field with a number tag or in the prison graveyard.
@Jolly said in Death By Firing Squad:
I think I'm the only one here that routinely visited jails and prisons.
Cruel is a life in prison.
By the time you die, nobody cares or wants you. They put you in a cardboard box and bury you in the pauper's field with a number tag or in the prison graveyard.
If you asked them, would they tell you they'd rather be dead?
Education is extremely important.
