67-year-old Brad Keith Sigmon, an inmate at the South Carolina Department of Corrections in the United States, was executed by firing squad on Friday, marking the first instance of this method being used in the US since 2010 and the fourth since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Sigmon chose the firing squad over other approved options such as lethal injection or the electric chair.
Pronounced deceased by a physician at 6:08 p.m. ET, Sigmon had been convicted of a double homicide involving his former girlfriend’s parents in 2001, during which he also kidnapped the ex-girlfriend before she managed to escape.
“I want my closing statement to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty,” Sigmon appealed in a statement.
The convict also quoted Bible verses on forgiveness, and said, “Nowhere does God in the New Testament give man the authority to kill another man.”
Sigmon’s attorneys filed a petition to stop his execution, seeking executive clemency and commutation of the death penalty to life imprisonment without parole.
The lawyers noted that he committed the crimes and “stood trial while in the grip of an undiagnosed, inherited mental illness.”
But the last minute push was unsuccessful as the Supreme Court and South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster declined to approve leniency.