The Final 24 Hours of Brad Keith Sigmon Executed by Firing Squad | Last Meal, Words, Death Row (US) 

On April 27th, 2001 in Taylor’s, South Carolina, a man walked into a house with a baseball bat and would spend the next 24 years trying to explain why. His name was Brad Keith Sigman. Inside that house lived the parents of his ex-girlfriend, a couple he’d once known as family. One week earlier, she had ended their relationship. Sigman couldn’t accept it.

Prosecutors would later say it took him less than two minutes to strike each of them nine times in the head with the bat. Then he waited for their daughter to come home. He kidnapped her at gunpoint. She ran. He fired shots at her as she escaped. By 2002, Sigman was convicted on two counts of murder and one count of first-degree burglary.

 He was sentenced to death twice plus 30 years for the burglary. He was sent to death row and there he would stay for more than two decades. But in South Carolina, a death sentence doesn’t end the story. The law required Sigmman to choose how he would die. And for years, that choice was tangled in legal chaos. In June of 2021, South Carolina’s Supreme Court ruled the state couldn’t force Sigmon into the electric chair without offering him lethal injection or firing squad as alternatives.

 His execution was halted. Then in February of 2025, the court halted it again. This time because South Carolina simply didn’t have the lethal injection drugs on hand. Around the same time, his attorneys made one final appeal. They asked the governor for clemency, arguing that Sigmman had committed his crimes and stood trial while suffering from an undiagnosed inherited mental illness.

Governor Henry McMaster said no. With no other options left, Brad Sigman made his decision. Not whether he would die. That was already settled. But how? He rejected the electric chair. His lawyer said it would cook him alive. He rejected lethal injection, too. And he had reasons.

 Just weeks earlier, another South Carolina inmate, Mario Bowman, had been executed with double the normal dose of the lethal drug. His autopsy showed his lungs had filled with fluid. Months before that, inmate Richard Moore received the same overdose administered in two separate injections 11 minutes apart. Sigman didn’t want that.

 So on Thursday, March 6th, 2025, his legal team made one last attempt, asking the US Supreme Court to delay the execution over the secrecy surrounding the state’s lethal injection drugs. The request was denied. That Wednesday evening, Sigman was served his final meal. Fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes with gravy, biscuits, cheesecake, and sweet tea.

 And on Friday, March 7th, 2025, he was brought into the execution chamber at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina. He wore a black jumpsuit. A hood was placed over his head. A white target with a red bullseye was set over his heart. In the same room sat the state’s unused electric chair, a silent reminder of the death he chose not to have.

 15 ft away, three volunteers raised their rifles. Sigman took several heavy breaths in the two minutes between the hood going on and the shots being fired. At 6:05 p.m., they fired at once. A doctor examined him for 90 seconds. At 6:08 p.m., Brad Sigmman was pronounced dead. His final words, read aloud by his attorney, were a message, he said, of love.

 A calling to his fellow Christians to help end the death penalty. Brad Sigman became the first person executed by firing squad in the United States in nearly 15 years, the first since Ronnie Lee Gardner in Utah back in 2010. He was the oldest person ever executed in the state of South Carolina. And his death marked only the fourth firing squad execution in America since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

He had a choice most people never have to make. It was early on the morning of April 27th, 2001 when 43-year-old Brad Keith Sigman stepped into the cool South Carolina air. He had spent the previous evening fueled by crack cocaine and alcohol, stewing over a relationship that had imploded just 7 days prior.

 His former girlfriend, Rebecca Barbar, had ended their three-year relationship, moving out of their home and back into her parents’ trailer. Her father, David Lark, had served Sigmman with eviction papers, giving him two weeks to clear off the shared property. For Sigmman, the eviction notice was not just a legal demand.

 It was an ultimatum that severed his remaining tether to the woman he had become dangerously obsessed with stalking. Sigman waited until the precise moment Rebecca left the property to drive her children to school. As soon as her car vanished down the road, he reached under his trailer, retrieved a wooden baseball bat, and walked toward the home of 62-year-old David Lark and 59-year-old Glattis Lark.

 Crossing the threshold, Sigmman confronted David Lark. Realizing the immediate danger, David shouted to his wife to fetch his gun. Before David could react further, Sigman swung the heavy bat, striking him repeatedly in the back of the head. Hearing the commotion, Glattis fled toward the living room. But Sigmon gave chase, overtaking her and bringing the weapon down on her with brutal force, moving back and forth between the two victims, Sigman ensured neither could stand again, inflicting nine separate blow strikes to each of their heads. The

entire onslaught took under 2 minutes. Forensic evidence later revealed that both David and Glattis survived for three to five agonizing minutes after the initial strikes. Suffering severe trauma and breathing blood into their lungs before passing away. With both parents dying on the floor, Sigman located David’s gun, picked it up, and waited in the silence of the house for Rebecca to return home.

 When Rebecca pulled back into the driveway after her morning school run, Sigmon ambushed her, brandishing her father’s firearm. He snatched her keys, forced her into her own vehicle, and began driving away, revealing his twisted plan to kidnap her, take her across state lines, and ultimately carry out a murder suicide. Desperate to escape, Rebecca seized a terrifying opportunity, throwing open the passenger door and throwing herself out of the moving car onto the road.

Sigman slammed on the brakes, leapt out, and pursued her on foot, firing repeated shots as she fled. Multiple bullets struck Rebecca, but she kept moving until Sigman’s gun clicked empty. Realizing he was out of ammunition, Sigman abandoned her on the roadside, ran back to the vehicle, and sped off, initiating a multi-state manhunt that would grip the region for days.

 By the time the legal proceedings against Brad Keith Sigman began inside a Greenville County courtroom in 2002, the defense was faced with an overwhelming mountain of physical evidence and damning survivor testimony. There was little room to argue over who had committed the horrifying assault inside the home of David and Glattis Lark.

 The bloodstain pattern analysis, the recovery of the murder weapon, and the harrowing firstirhand account of Rebecca Barbar, who had survived being shot as she fled her captor left no legal doubt as to the identity of the perpetrator. Instead, the trial centered heavily on state of mind, intent, and the ultimate measure of punishment under South Carolina law.

Prosecutors painted a vivid, meticulous picture of a calculated ambush driven by obsession, rejection, and absolute malice. They detailed how Sigman had waited until the home was vulnerable, weapon in hand, executing a plan that destroyed an entire family in less than 2 minutes. To demonstrate the sheer severity of the act, the state presented three distinct legal aggravating factors to the jury.

 That the murders were committed during the execution of a first-degree burglary. That multiple victims were slain during a single continuous course of criminal conduct. And that the physical trauma inflicted upon the victims constituted physical torture. The defense attempted to counter this narrative by focusing on Sigman’s heavily impaired state at the time of the killings.

 They brought forward testimony highlighting his prolonged multi-day binge on crack cocaine and alcohol leading up to the morning of April 27th, arguing that his capacity to form deliberate rational intent had been severely eroded by substance abuse. They also attempted to introduce elements of his past, pointing to a long history of personal instability, severe trauma, and mental health struggles to argue for mercy.

However, the brutal nature of the crime proved impossible for the jury to look past. The stark reality that David and Glattis Lark had been repeatedly bludgeoned with a baseball bat in their own home while trying to protect each other resonated deeply throughout the courtroom. When deliberations concluded, the jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts across the board.

 Two counts of murder and one count of first-degree burglary. During the penalty phase, the prosecution argued that the extreme violence paired with the subsequent kidnapping and shooting of Rebecca demanded the ultimate penalty. The jury agreed, finding that all three statutory aggravating circumstances had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

 They found zero mitigating factors sufficient to spare his life. The judge formally handed down the maximum possible sentences under the law. 30 years in prison for the charge of firstdegree burglary and two separate death sentences for the murders of David and Glattis Lark. With those words spoken, Brad Keith Sigman was escorted out of the courtroom and sent to South Carolina’s death row, beginning a protracted 24-year legal battle that would stretch his execution across decades of appeals, stays, and changing state execution methods. For nearly two

decades following his conviction, Brad Keith Sigman sat inside a cell on death row at the Broad River Correctional Institution, watching the calendar turn as his legal team pursued standard state and federal appeals. By the late 2010s, however, those routine postconviction remedies had largely been exhausted.

What followed was not a debate over his innocence, but an extraordinary, highly publicized saga surrounding the mechanics of how the state of South Carolina could lawfully take his life. By 2021, South Carolina was facing a severe multi-year shortage of execution pharmaceuticals. The lethal injection drugs required under state protocol had expired and chemical manufacturers refused to sell new batches to correctional departments due to corporate policies and public relations backlash.

 This shortage effectively created an involuntary decadelong moratorum on capital punishment across the state. Determined to resume executions, the South Carolina General Assembly passed a law in May 2021 changing the default execution method to the electric chair while also authorizing the creation of a brand new option, death by firing squad.

 The law stipulated that if lethal injection was unavailable, death row inmates would be forced to choose between electrocution or a threeperson firing squad. Shortly after the governor signed the bill, state corrections officials issued a death warrant for Sigmman, setting his execution date for June 18th, 2021. Because lethal injection drugs were out of stock, the state presented Sigon with a choice.

 Sit in the 112year-old wooden electric chair or face a firing squad. However, the Department of Corrections had not yet established physical protocols, safety standards, or constructed the actual firing range inside the death chamber. Sigman’s defense team immediately filed an emergency suit with the South Carolina Supreme Court.

 They argued that forcing an inmate to choose between electrocution, a method they categorized as cruel and unusual and a firing squad option that did not yet physically exist, was an unconstitutional violation of statutory law and due process. On June 16th, 2021, just 48 hours before Sigman was scheduled to die, the state high court agreed.

 The justices issued a temporary stay, ruling that the state could not force an inmate to electrocution without offering a functional, fully operational firing squad or lethal injection as actual available alternatives. For the next 2 years, the state remained gridlocked, attempting to procure pentobarbatl while constructing its firing squad facility.

In September 2023, state officials announced they had finally obtained a fresh supply of lethal injection drugs under a newly passed shield law that kept the drug suppliers identities completely secret. With the legal roadblocks cleared, the South Carolina Supreme Court resumed issuing death warrants.

 On January 10th, 2025, the court set a new execution date for Sigman, February 12th, 2025. However, just days before he was scheduled to enter the chamber, another legal anomaly struck. The defense discovered that the state’s newly acquired batch of pentobarbatl had reached its technical expiration limit, and prison officials had not yet secured a tested replacement.

 Faced with the reality that carrying out the execution using compromised pharmaceuticals would lead to immediate federal constitutional challenges, the South Carolina Supreme Court stepped in once again. On February 4th, 2025, the court officially vacated Sigmon’s February 12 execution warrant, sending the state back to square one and continuing a highstakes legal tugofwar that kept the victim’s family, the public, and the condemned man trapped in legal limbo.

 As the administrative delays faded and the South Carolina Supreme Court established a new execution date for March 7th, 2025, Brad Keith Sigman’s legal defense team launched their final most comprehensive effort to spare his life. With judicial appeals virtually exhausted across state and federal courts, the defense turned to the ultimate avenue of relief under state law, a petition for executive clemency addressed directly to South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster.

 The petition rested on a profound multiaceted argument centered on mental health, personal transformation, and institutional accountability. Defense attorneys argued that at the time of the 2001 double homicide, Sigman was not merely under the influence of illegal substances, but was acting in the severe grip of an undiagnosed inherited mental illness.

 Newly submitted psychiatric evaluations and family genetic histories presented evidence suggesting a deep-seated predisposition to severe psychiatric breaks. a factor the defense contended was never fully explored or understood by the original trial jury in 2002. To complement the psychological findings, the clemency request highlighted Sigman’s conduct over his nearly quarter century of incarceration on death row.

 Affidavit submitted alongside the petition painted a portrait of a radically changed man. Prison staff, correctional officers, and fellow inmates submitted statements describing Sigman as a model prisoner who had devoted his decades in confinement to faith, personal atonement, and quietly mentoring younger inmates within the institution.

 His legal team emphasized that his execution would serve no further public safety purpose, urging the governor to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The plea also raised serious ethical concerns regarding the state’s execution methods. With lethal injection drugs facing ongoing regulatory scrutinies and the electric chair widely condemned by human rights advocates, Sigman was placed in the position of having to select a execution method, ultimately choosing death by firing squad to avoid

what his council described as the agonizing unconstitutional risks of the alternative methods. The petition urged the executive office to consider the broader moral precedent of authorizing a method of execution that had not been carried out in the United States in 15 years. Despite the extensive volume of character references, psychological evaluations, and public appeals, Governor Henry McMaster stood firm on the statutory mandate of the court’s original judgment.

 Shortly before the scheduled execution on March 7th, 2025, the governor issued an official statement denying executive clemency. Citing the extreme unprovoked violence inflicted upon David and Glattis Lark inside their own home, the governor concluded that the jury’s unanimous verdict and capital sentence remained entirely just, clearing the final administrative hurdle for the state to carry out the sentence.

 By February 2025, after more than 23 years on death row, the relentless legal maneuvering around Brad Keith Sigman had distilled down to a single stark procedural obligation under South Carolina law. With the governor refusing to grant executive clemency and state courts upholding the validity of his death warrants, Sigman was handed an official election form by corrections officials.

Under state statute, a condemned inmate scheduled for execution was legally required to select their preferred method of death from three options: lethal injection, the electric chair, or a threeperson firing squad. For months, Sigman had listened to reports from inside the correctional system regarding recent executions.

 His defense team had repeatedly voiced alarm over the state’s secret pentobarbatital protocols, pointing to claims that recent lethal injections had caused prolonged agonizing distress akin to chemical suffocation. Electrocution, in his view, presented an equally horrifying prospect of severe physical burning.

 Forced to choose among options his legal team openly characterized as an unconstitutional cruelty, Sigman made a choice designed to ensure an instantaneous death. In late February 2025, he signed the state paperwork, formally electing to die by firing squad. The selection made national headlines, positioning South Carolina to carry out the first firing squad execution in the United States in nearly 15 years.

 As the calendar ticked down toward the morning of March 7th, 2025, workers inside the Broad River Correctional Institution made final preparations inside the capital punishment chamber, constructing the reinforced backs stop, mounting the heavy restraint chair, and prepping the three volunteer marksman panel. For the family of David and Glattis Lark, the looming date represented the long- awaited closing chapter of a 24-year nightmare that had begun on a spring morning in Taylor, South Carolina.

 For Sigman, it marked the end of a long, torturous legal road where every avenue of appeal had finally run dry. After more than 20 years on death row, and with the governor’s door closed, Brad Sigman had one decision left. And as the world waited to see if the state would truly pull the trigger, the entire nation was forced to confront the dark, brutal realities of modern capital punishment.

 To understand why a man facing his final hours on Earth would voluntarily request to be shot by three rifles, one has to look closely at the terrifying alternatives state law presented him with. For Brad Keith Sigman, the election of the firing squad was not an act of bravado or defiance. It was a desperate, calculated move to escape what his legal team characterized as torture, disguised as state execution.

 His attorney, Gerald Bo King, laid out the grim calculus behind his client’s decision with unsettling clarity. Under South Carolina law, the electric chair served as the default execution method if no selection was made. But for Sigman, sitting in a century old wooden apparatus and having hundreds of volts of electricity surged through his body until his heart stopped was an absolute non-starter.

 King explained that Sigman viewed electrocution as a horrific ordeal that would quite literally cook him alive from the inside out, causing unthinkable physical agony before loss of consciousness. That left lethal injection long marketed to the public as a tranquil medicalized transition. But by early 2025, serious questions were swirling around the state’s secret compounding practices.

 Under South Carolina’s newly implemented execution secrecy laws, the Department of Corrections was legally prohibited from disclosing where it obtained its lethal drugs, how they were mixed, or who tested their potency. What defense attorneys did know, however, was deeply alarming. When South Carolina executed Richard Moore on November 1st, 2024, prison officials did not use the standard 5 g dose of pentobarbatital typical in capital executions.

 Instead, they administered an extraordinary 10 g mega dose split into two separate injections delivered 11 minutes apart. Just months later, on January 31st, 2025, when Mario Bowman entered the execution chamber, the state repeated this massive 10 g protocol. The resulting autopsy findings for Bowman confirmed the defense’s worst fears.

 The heavy unrefined dose of pentobarbatital had caused rapid pulmonary edema, agonizing condition where fluid fills the lungs, causing a sensation akin to severe chemical drowning while the inmate remains paralyzed. On the evening of Wednesday, March 5th, 2025, inside the highsecurity death house at Broad River Correctional Institution, time began to contract for Brad Keith Sigman.

 The relentless rhythm of legal filings and court briefs fell silent within his cell as prison staff initiated standard final hours protocols. As part of those procedures, Sigman was offered his requested final meal. The tray brought to his cell contained classic southern comfort food. four pieces of crispy fried chicken, a side of green beans, mashed potatoes smothered in brown gravy, warm biscuits, a slice of cheesecake, and a large cup of sweet tea.

 While Sigman spent those quiet evening hours reflecting on his past, his appellet team was making one last desperate stand inside the highest judicial body in the nation. On Thursday, March 6th, 2025, less than 24 hours before the death warrant was set to take effect, his attorneys submitted an emergency petition to the United States Supreme Court in Washington DC.

The petition asked the justices to grant an immediate stay of execution, launching a fierce constitutional challenge against South Carolina’s statutory secrecy laws. Defense Council argued that by concealing critical details regarding the purity, compounding sources, and testing protocols of its execution drugs, the state had effectively unconstitutionally shielded its practices from judicial oversight.

 They asserted that this total lack of transparency forced an inmate into an impossible dilemma. Accept an unvetted, potentially agonizing lethal injection protocol or elect to stand in front of a firing squad. The emergency filing triggered a swift review by the justices behind closed doors. However, as twilight fell over Columbia, South Carolina, the High Court delivered its final unappealable response.

 Without public disscent, the United States Supreme Court denied Sigman’s request for a stay, formally clearing away the absolute last legal barrier, standing between the condemned man and the execution chamber. Every state and federal judicial avenue was officially exhausted, leaving the scheduled execution on track for the following morning.

 On Friday, March 7th, 2025, inside the execution chamber at the South Carolina Department of Corrections in Colombia, the atmosphere was defined by a heavy sterile tension. The room was stark and modest, illuminated by fluorescent lighting above cinder block walls. In the center sat the gray metal execution chair equipped with heavy restraint straps.

 Brad Keith Sigman was escorted into the chamber wearing a solid black prison jumpsuit. Guards secured him into the chair, fastening his arms, legs, and torso firmly into place. Over his heart, officials pinned a white target featuring a sharp red bullseye. A black hood was then placed over his head, entirely covering his face.

 Directly opposite Sigman, behind a wall fitted with narrow openings, stood three volunteer prison employees armed with rifles. They were stationed exactly 15 ft away from where he sat, a distance precisely equivalent to the length between a basketball court’s free throw line and the backboard. Through those openings, the marksman aimed directly at the white target on his chest, remaining completely unseen by the roughly 12 official witnesses gathered behind the thick, bullet-resistant observation glass for two agonizing minutes after the hood was secured. The chamber

remained in complete silence. The only visible movement came from Sigman’s chest, expanding and contracting as he drew several slow, heavy breaths. At 6:05 p.m., without a countdown or verbal warning, a sudden explosive crack echoed through the chamber as all three volunteers fired simultaneously. The abrupt gunshot shattered the silence, causing media and official witnesses behind the glass to flinch.

The impact violently jolted Sigman’s body, instantly destroying the white target on his jumpsuit as three high velocity rounds struck his chest. His arms briefly tensed against the restraints. Within seconds, his breathing slowed, taking two final shallow gasps before coming to a complete stop.

 Moments later, the black pole shade covering the marksman’s window was drawn closed, and a state physician stepped into the chamber. The doctor approached the chair and conducted a systematic medical examination that lasted roughly 90 seconds. Following the check, prison spokeswoman Christy Shane officially announced the time of death at 6:08 p.m.

With those words, 67year-old Brad Keith Sigman became the first person executed by firing squad in South Carolina history and the first in the entire United States in 15 years, bringing a violent, controversial close to a 24-year saga that began with a baseball bat on a spring morning in Taylor’s, South Carolina.

 Standing before reporters and news cameras, his lead attorney, Gerald Bo King, stepped forward to read his client’s final words to the world. The statement struck a solemn, reflective tone that diverged sharply from the violence that had defined the case 24 years earlier. In the document, Sigman expressed deep remorse, offering a final message centered on spiritual reconciliation and forgiveness.

 He closed his written statement with a direct plea, urging his fellow Christians across the country to examine their consciences and join the movement to abolish capital punishment, calling on faith communities to help bring an end to state sanctioned executions altogether. The execution of Brad Keith Sigman marked a historic moment in the modern history of American capital punishment.

 At 67 years old, Sigman became the oldest person ever executed by the state of South Carolina since the reintroduction of the death penalty. More broadly, his death signaled a rare breach in decades of execution protocol nationwide. When the three rifles discharged inside the Broad River Correctional Institution, Sigman became the first person executed by firing squad in the United States in nearly 15 years.

 The last individual to face a firing squad in America had been Ronnie Lee Gardner, who was executed by the state of Utah in June 2010. Furthermore, Sigmon’s execution represented only the fourth time a firing squad had been utilized across the entire country since the United States Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

As news of the execution spread, the case left an indelible mark on the landscape of true crime and American justice. For the community of Taylor’s, South Carolina, and the surviving family members of David and Glattis Lark, the sound of those three rifle shots brought a definitive official close to a 24-year saga of legal battles, stays of execution, and unimaginable grief.

 For the legal system, it served as a stark, unforgettable landmark in the ongoing complex national debate surrounding transparency, constitutional rights, and the ultimate measure of punishment. and