The state of South Carolina has executed a murderer sentenced to the team on Friday evening in the first execution of this type in the United States since 2010.
The detainee, Brad Sigmon, 67, was declared dead at 6:08 p.m. after a shooting team fired three bullets on the target placed above his heart, said the Correctional Services department.
A judge had ordered Mr. Sigmon, who was found guilty of defeating the parents of his ex-girlfriend to death with a baseball bat in 2001, to choose from three methods of execution: lethal injection, electrocution or shooting. His lawyer, Gerald King, said that Mr. Sigmon had chosen to be killed because he had concerns about the Latal injection process of South Carolina.
According to three journalists who witnessed the execution, Mr. Sigmon took several deep breaths before the shots were fired. After being killed, his chest got up and fell approximately twice and his arms stiffed, according to journalists, who were from the Associated Press, Post and Courier and Wyff, a local television channel.
Mr. Sigmon is the first detainee in the history of South Carolina to be killed in this way. Surveys show that a majority of Americans promote the death penalty, but many consider the shooting team as an archaic form of justice. But as lethal injection drugs have become more difficult to obtain and have sometimes led to botched executions, several states have recently legalized the shooting teams as a method of execution.
Utah had previously been the only state to use a shooting team in modern times; He did it in 2010, 1996 and 1977.
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