Editor’s note: This is the latest edition of Curious Mississippi, a service to the readers of the Clarion Ledger. Other questions answered by Curious Mississippi have surrounded recycling, potholes, UMMC construction, cicadas and the international nature of the Jackson airport. Readers can submit questions by email to CuriousMississippi@ClarionLedger.com and editors will pick out the best and reporters will answer them in an upcoming edition.

Mississippi is one of five states that still permit executions by firing squad, alongside Utah, Oklahoma, Idaho and South Carolina.

However, a firing squad execution has never been conducted in Mississippi’s long history with the death penalty. The only methods that have been used to execute prisoners are hangings, the electric chair, gas chamber and lethal injection, according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections website. MDOC is responsible for carrying out executions.

Currently, there are 35 inmates on death row in Mississippi, according to an MDOC spokesperson. The Clarion Ledger attempted to find out MDOC’s policy on executions by firing squad, but was told “due to pending litigation surrounding death row inmates, our office does not comment on execution methods/processes.”

In early March, South Carolina became the first state since 2010 to execute a death row inmate by firing squad, reigniting ethical debates over capital punishment.

On March 7, Brad Sigmon, 67, was executed by three sharpshooters from the South Carolina Department of Corrections, who volunteered for the task, according to the Greenville News. Sigmon was convicted of the 2001 murders of his ex-girlfriend’s parents, David and Gladys Larke, whom he beat to death with a baseball bat. He then kidnapped his ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Armstrong, but she managed to escape.

During the execution, Sigmon was hooded and strapped to a metal chair with his shoulder facing the shooters. The chair was mounted on a platform in the corner of the execution chamber. At 6:05, the prison warden gave the order and the three-member firing squad shot with rifles simultaneously through a hole in the chamber wall. A doctor declared Simon dead three minutes later.

Sigmon’s execution marked the first time in South Carolina’s history that a death row inmate was killed by firing squad. The last U.S. execution by firing squad occurred in Utah in 2010.

The death penalty methods in Mississippi

While Mississippi has never executed an inmate by firing squad, the method remains legal in the state. It was as recently as 2017 when the Mississippi Legislature proposed a bill that included firing squad as one of four execution options. The bill was signed into law by then-Gov. Phil Bryant that summer.

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The 2017 bill outlined a preferred order of execution methods for MDOC. The first option is lethal injection, which is the primary method for a majority of the 27 states where the death penalty is legal. If lethal injection wasn’t possible, either due to a successful court challenge or lack of availability, MDOC should pursue execution via nitrogen hypoxia. If that wasn’t an option, it moved to the electric chair. Firing squad would be the last resort.

But in 2022, a new bill was filed removing the preferred order and giving MDOC more discretion in choosing execution methods. It lists all available execution methods — lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, electrocution and firing squad — together and adds the statement, “It is the policy of the State of Mississippi that intravenous injection of a substance or substances in a lethal quantity into the body shall be the preferred method of execution,” according to previous Clarion Ledger reporting. The bill was signed into law by Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.

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History of the death penalty in Mississippi

The last lethal injection execution in Mississippi was in December 2022, when Thomas “Eddie” Loden, a white male, was put to death for the 2000 kidnapping, rape and murder of 16-year-old Leesa Marie Gray in Itawamba County. Loden repeatedly and unsuccessfully challenged the conviction in state and federal courts over the 20-plus years he was imprisoned on death row.

According to July 2021 court papers, Loden’s lethal injection consisted of a mixture of the sedative midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. Vecuronium bromide paralyzes the muscles, potassium chloride stops the heart.

Loden is one of 19 prisoners to be executed by lethal injection in the state, which was first introduced as Mississippi’s preferred method in the 1980s, according to the MDOC website. In total, 16 white men and three Black men have been executed by lethal injection in the state.

Tracy Alan Hansen, a white male, was the first death row inmate to be executed by lethal injection in July 2002. Hansen was convicted, along with his girlfriend, of the 1987 shooting murder of a Mississippi state trooper. His girlfriend, Anita Krecic, still sits in prison after being sentenced to life in prison in 1988.

Before lethal injection, MDOC used the gas chamber for executions starting in 1954 when the chamber was installed in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. A total of 35 male inmates — 27 Black and eight white — were killed using the chamber over the course of 34 years.

The first to be executed in the gas chamber was Gerald A. Gallego in 1955, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit based in Washington D.C. Gallego was an escaped white convict from California who was convicted of the 1954 murder of a police officer outside Ocean Springs. The last to be executed in the gas chamber was Leo Edwards, a Black man who was convicted of the murder of a Jackson convenience store clerk in 1980. Edwards was executed in the gas chamber in 1989.

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And prior to the gas chamber, “the old oak electric chair” was moved from county to county between 1940 and Feb. 5, 1952. A total of 75 prisoners were executed in this fashion with the first being Hilton Fortenberry. He was convicted of capital murder in Jefferson Davis County. The electric chair is now on display at the Mississippi Law Enforcement Training Academy in Pearl.

Hanging was the primary form of execution in Mississippi until the introduction of the electric chair in 1940.