A South Carolina inmate is set to die by firing squad Friday, a rare execution method in the United States that experts say may be making a comeback in more states as lethal injection drugs become harder to obtain.

Brad Keith Sigmon, 67, will be executed for the 2001 beating deaths of his ex-girlfriend’s parents, David and Gladys Larke.

Death row inmates in the state can choose how they die or be given the default option, the state’s over 100-year-old electric chair. Sigmon’s attorney, Gerald “Bo” King, said in a statement his client made the best choice he could given the “monstrous” alternatives.

Death by firing squad has been used as an execution method for nearly as long as firearms have existed, and it is still used by countries around the world, Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor, told USA TODAY. But in the U.S., firing squads have not been widely used since they were supplanted in popularity by another archaic method, hanging, in the mid-19th century, Denno said.

In recent years, South Carolina became one of five states that have legalized firing squads as an execution method, most recently Idaho in 2023.

“It’s safe to say since 1858 we’ve never had this many states adopting firing squad as a method of execution, and that’s a pretty astonishing statistic,” Denno said.

Who is Brad Keith Sigmon? More about the inmate who chose the firing squad

Firing squads weren’t common, even at the height of their popularity

It is believed the first execution carried out in colonial America was done by firing squad, Denno said. From 1608, when Captain George Kendall was killed, to 2002, at least 143 civilians have been executed by shooting, according to a database known as the Espy File.

Firing squads may also have been used by the military during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, but the bulk of these executions were largely confined to the Civil War, according to Mark Smith, director of the Institute for Southern Studies.

“It wasn’t terribly common during the Civil War itself, even when it was used, and it was used primarily as a public deterrent against desertion for both Union and Confederate soldiers,” said Smith, who submitted an affidavit on the history of firing squad executions in a case heard by the South Carolina Supreme Court.

Smith said less than 5% of the 26,000 Union soldiers tried for desertion were sentenced to death by firing squad, citing a 2009 book called “Confederate Death Sentences: A Reference Guide.” It’s not clear how many Confederates received the same sentence, but Smith said about 12% of the Army of Northern Virginia soldiers tried for desertion were sentenced to die by this method.

The Death Penalty Information Center says none of executions by firing squad since 1890 were botched, citing the 2014 book “Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty.” But the center notes that the Salt Lake City Tribune has reported that the executions of Wallace Wilkerson in 1879 and Eliseo J. Mares in 1951 were botched, adding that Mares was shot in the hip and abdomen and wasn’t declared dead for ​“sev­er­al min­utes.”

Firing squads remain rare, but more states could follow

In modern U.S. history, there have only been three executions by firing squad all of which took place in Utah. The state used this method to kill Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010, John Albert Taylor in 1996 and Gary Mark Gilmore in 1977.

As lethal injection drugs have become harder to obtain, states with the death penalty have looked to expand their execution methods to firing squads and nitrogen gas, which was first used in the U.S. in January 2024 in Alabama for the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith.

Many pharmaceutical companies do not want to publicly provide drugs used for lethal injections, former Death Penalty Information Center Deputy Director Ngozi Ndulue previously told the Mississippi Clarion Ledger, part of the USA TODAY Network. In order to resume executions in South Carolina after more than a decade, lawmakers passed a shield law to conceal the identities of those involved in executions, and the state Department of Corrections made over 1,300 inquiries to drug manufacturers, suppliers and compounding pharmacies in search of lethal drugs.

Idaho, Mississippi and Oklahoma also allow death by firing squad, though lethal injection remains the primary method, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But a bill working its way through the Idaho Legislature following the failed lethal injection of Thomas Creech could make firing squads the state’s primary form of capital punishment and others may follow suit, Denno said.

How do firing squad executions work?

The South Carolina Department of Corrections previously told USA TODAY the inmate will be restrained in a metal chair in the corner of a room shared by the state’s electric chair, according to the state’s protocols. The firing squad will include three volunteers from the corrections staff who will stand behind a wall with loaded rifles 15 feet from the inmate.

The wall will have an opening that won’t be visible from the witness room, and bullet-resistant glass has been installed between the death chamber and the witness room. Witnesses typically include family of both the inmate and victim, news media, attorneys and prison staff.”The inmate will be strapped into the chair, and a hood will be placed over his head,” the department said. “A small aim point will be placed over his heart by a member of the execution team. After the warden reads the execution order, the team will fire. After the shots, a doctor will examine the inmate. After the inmate is declared dead, the curtain will be drawn and witnesses escorted out.”

Reporters who witnessed Gardner’s execution in 2010 said five volunteer prison staff members fired at him from about 25 feet away with .30-caliber rifles, aiming at a target pinned over his chest as he sat in a chair, ABC News reported. One of the rifles had a blank so none of the volunteers knew whether they fired a fatal bullet, according to ABC. Gardner was pronounced dead within two minutes after the shots were fired.

Denno said at least one execution, which took place in Nevada in 1913, used a machine to pull the trigger instead of human executioners. Idaho Department of Correction spokesperson Sanda Kuzeta-Cerimagic said the agency is considering using “a remote-operated weapons system alongside traditional firing squad methods.” 

Should firing squads still be legal?

The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled last year that the state could execute death row inmates by firing squad, the electric chair or lethal injection, but two of the justices said they felt a firing squad was not legal, the New York Times reported.

Denno said death by firing squads meet the criteria for a constitutional method of execution set by the United States Supreme Court: It’s a well-known method, unlike nitrogen hypoxia. It’s readily available, unlike some drugs used for lethal injection. And it’s effective, meaning that no one has survived a botched execution by firing squad.

While Americans may not like it, particularly given the country’s public health crisis of gun violence, Denno believes it is “the least inhumane” and “most honest” form of capital punishment.

“If I were going to have to choose, I would choose firing squad. There’s no question about that,” Denno said. But at the same time, she added: “It is a barbaric method. It’s associated with war time, it’s associated with on the street killings, and it’s associated with how they kill in countries that we would not want to share an association with, and it is associated with interpersonal violence in this country.”

Smith said that he can understand why an inmate would choose the firing squad believing it to be more effective and immediate than the alternatives. But he said Americans who witnessed such executions during the Civil War often described them as ghoulish, and shots sometimes had to be fired more than once to ensure the person was dead.

Though modern firing squad executions will look very different than their 19th century counterparts, Smith said “what we’re doing today is a throwback to something that was considered unusual and cruel during the hardest part of American history, and I’m not sure where that really places us today.”

Contributing: Amanda Lee Myers, USA TODAY