The bullseye on his chest disappeared as three shots rang out – inside the US’s first firing squad execution in 15 years

I want my closing statement to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty.”

The last words he asked to be said on his behalf were

The Bible tells you, I know it says ‘an eye for an eye’ and ‘a tooth for a tooth’ but if you read on down in there it says, ‘Revenge is not mine, says the Lord, revenge is God’s.”

Rebecca said

It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle.”

He added

He’s just trying to prolong something that should have been done 20 years ago.”

He said

We are now under God's grace and mercy."

He ended his speech with

The white target with the red bullseye that had been on his chest, standing out against his black prison jumpsuit, disappeared instantly as Sigmon’s whole body flinched."

He recalled

Then we left through the same door we came in."

Jeffrey added

Penny Taylorwade

He never tried to shy away from the harm he caused and used his time in prison to develop his faith, becoming an unofficial chaplain for South Carolina's death row prisons

His spiritual adviser, the Reverend Hillary Taylor, who watched him die, said

We could not see the guns

Witness Anna Dobbins, from a South Carolina TV station, said

When the shots were fired it was very loud, very jarring

AP reporter Mr Collins, who has witnessed ten executions, said

You did see a red stain on Sigmon's chest

Fellow reporter Jeffrey Collins, from the Associated Press, added

If I couldn't have her, nobody could.

Sigmon later gave a full confession, saying

While the firing squad lays bare the extreme violence of the state taking a human life, in lethal injections the violence is done on the inside, deliberately hidden, to maintain the comforting lie that people can be executed humanely.

He added

He's someone who is a different person than the person who caused violence 20 years ago.

She added

My parents showed us what unconditional love was all about

She said last week

As a journalist you want to ready yourself for an assignment. You research a case. You read about the subject,

Collins wrote

I won’t forget the crack of the rifles Friday and that target disappearing. Also etched in my mind: Sigmon talking or mouthing toward his lawyer, trying to let him know he was OK before the hood went on,

he wrote

I also pored over the transcript of his trial, including how prosecutors said it took less than two minutes for Sigmon to strike his ex-girlfriend’s parents nine times each in the head with a baseball bat, going back and forth between them in different rooms of their Greenville County home in 2001 until they were dead,

he added

It’s impossible to know what to expect when you’ve never seen someone shot at close range right in front of you,

he said

Brad's death was horrifying and violent,

King, his lawyer, said in a statement