Supreme Court refuses to halt South Carolina murderer Brad Keith Sigmon’s execution by firing squad

The Supreme Court on Friday denied a South Carolina murderer’s request to not be executed, about two hours before he is set to die by a firing squad.

It will be the first time South Carolina executes someone by this method. The execution is scheduled for 6 p.m.

Brad Keith Sigmon, 67, kidnapped ex-girlfriend Rebecca Armstrong and beat her parents to death.

He told police he planned on tying up Ms. Armstrong’s parents so he could kidnap her, spend a romantic weekend together and kill her afterward. But he wound up beating her parents to death with a baseball bat at their home on April 27, 2001.

He managed to kidnap Ms. Armstrong as well, court records showed, but she escaped from her ex-lover by jumping out of his moving car. Sigmon shot her in the foot while she ran away.

Sigmon chose to be killed by the team of armed prison staff in Columbia’s Broad River Correctional Institute after his lawyer said he didn’t want to be executed in an electric chair or deal with unreliable lethal injections.

Sigmon’s lawyers had sought to pause the execution, saying the state did not give enough information about its supply of lethal injection drugs, which created a due process violation. But the state’s attorney general asked the high court to reject that argument, noting that Sigmon has repeatedly admitted guilt to “the bludgeoning murders of his former girlfriend’s parents.”

The justices rejected the request roughly two hours before the firing squad was set to execute him.

Sigmon will be strapped to a chair — the same one used for electrocutions — with a hood over his head and a target over his heart, the state’s Department of Corrections said.

The warden will then read the execution order, and the firing squad will open fire at the prisoner. A doctor will be sent in to examine the inmate afterward.

Sigmon will be the first person executed by firing squad in the U.S. since 2010, which was carried out in Utah against convicted killer Ronnie Lee Gardner. Utah has been the only state to perform this style of execution and has killed prisoners in 1977 and 1996 by firing squad.