U.S. prisoner Brad Keith Sigmon, 67, was put to death by firing squad on Friday while incarcerated at the South Carolina Department of Corrections. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, it was the fourth execution of that type to occur in the United States since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 and the first since 2010.CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
Out of the three state-approved means of execution—lethal injection, the electric chair, and the firing squad—Sigmon chose the firing squad. At 6:08 p.m. ET, authorities said at a news conference that he had been found guilty of double homicide and that a doctor had proclaimed him dead. In 2001, Sigmon was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents. After the killings, he abducted the ex-girlfriend, but she managed to escape.
Sigmon made a plea in a statement, saying, “I want my closing statement to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty.” “Nowhere in the New Testament does God give man the authority to kill another man,” the prisoner added, quoting passages from the Bible about forgiveness. In order to prevent Sigmon’s execution, his lawyers petitioned for executive mercy and the death sentence to be commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
He committed the acts and “stood trial while in the grip of an undiagnosed, inherited mental illness,” according to the attorneys. However, the Supreme Court and South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster rejected mercy, thus the last-minute effort failed.CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
