Idaho transitions to firing squad as primary means of execution

Don't get all worked up about a stream of grisly state sponsored killings -- Idaho has executed three people in the last 50 years 

Trained members of Idaho law enforcement with demonstrated firearms proficiency are expected to fill slots for carrying out the death penalty by firing squad as the state prison system transitions to the controversial execution method next month, reported the Idaho Statesman

Don't get all worked up about a stream of grisly state sponsored killings.  Idaho has executed three people in the last 50 years. Six volunteers certified for no less than three years apiece through Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST, will be recruited to ensure the Idaho Department of Correction is ready to comply with a state law that prioritizes shooting prisoners to death over lethal injection starting July 1.

No one on the team may have faced disciplinary action over firearms, use of force or related conduct over the prior year, according to new execution protocols the prison system released this week.

State prison leadership has sought to avoid needing to rely on volunteers among corrections officers to pull the triggers in an execution, IDOC Director Bree Derrick previously said. The agency explored the possibility of a remote-operated system as Idaho becomes the only U.S. state with a firing squad as its lead execution method, but one did not come to fruition.

That left IDOC to instead devise a human firing squad, the agency said. “The Idaho Department of Correction recognizes the gravity of carrying out a court-ordered execution and the responsibility that comes with it,” Derrick said in a statement to the Idaho Statesman. “The department is committed to fulfilling this responsibility with professionalism, respect, and strict adherence to the law. Our procedures are designed to ensure that any execution is conducted in a secure, orderly, and dignified manner while safeguarding the rights of all individuals involved and maintaining the safety and security of staff, witnesses, and the public.”

The firing squad will consist of three primary shooters and two alternates, with a team leader who will check, maintain and load a live round into each of the IDOC-owned rifles used for executions. None of the team members may have a blood or legal relationship to the condemned prisoner or their family, or the victims or their relatives. The identities of all firing squad members will be confidential, per state law. 

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Firing squads make a comeback, stripping away the 'veneer of medical theater'

 Maurice Chammah writing for The Marshall Project: 

There is no tidy way to kill someone. But for the last century, Americans have searched for a way to carry out the death penalty that minimizes suffering while lessening trauma for executioners and witnesses. Those efforts have gone so poorly that we’re returning to a visceral execution method from the past.

Last month, the Justice Department encouraged federal prison officials to consider execution by firing squad amid a nationwide struggle to secure lethal injection drugs. South Carolina has already used firing squads three times recently, placing hoods over the prisoner’s head and firing rifles at a red bull’s-eye placed over the heart. Four other states have authorized the method, and Idaho is renovating its execution chamber to accommodate firing squads.

This article was published in partnership with The New York Times.

There is no question that killing a person in this manner is brutal. Witnesses have described the crack of rifles and the eerie silence as blood spills from the condemned person’s chest. It is a testament to the brutality of our execution system that firing squads may also be more effective and reliable than lethal injection, which is the most widely used execution method. Dr. James Williams, an emergency room physician and a firearms expert who has testified about firing squad executions in courtrooms across the country, told me last year that “there is a lot of evidence that the near-instant loss of blood pressure means no blood gets to the brainstem, and there is a rapid loss of consciousness.”

Williams is largely opposed to capital punishment, and he believes in minimizing suffering for executions that do occur. He told me an even faster method would be to fire a bullet into the brainstem, leading to death in milliseconds. As horrifying as that sounds, it shows how much we’ve shrouded the inevitable violence of the death penalty with syringes and barbiturates. Autopsies have indicated that many prisoners who looked peaceful as they were dying were actually paralyzed and may have felt as if they were drowning.

Firing squad executions strip away the veneer of medical theater.

Some Americans point to the horrific nature of the crimes being punished in death penalty cases and say: The more violent the execution, the better. But support for capital punishment, which is legal in 27 states, has been declining for decades. Polling shows that just over half of Americans support it, down from 80 percent in 1994. There are many reasons for this drop, among them high-profile botched executions. A wave of bloody spectacles, in multiple states and at the federal level, would be a clearer test of how deep support for the death penalty actually runs.

Before the early 20th century, the United States did not have much trouble accepting the gruesome sights, sounds and smells of executions. At the country’s founding, the violence of firing squads was part of the point; deserters were executed this way during the Revolutionary War and Civil War to deter other soldiers from absconding. In 1936, around 20,000 people attended the country’s last public hanging, an event that newspapers later decried as a “carnival of sadism.”

Firing squads and hangings mostly disappeared in the early 20th century, as public officials moved executions behind closed doors. There was a concern that public executions looked too much like the lynchings they were supposed to supplant.

Firing squad and gas executions resurface in U.S.

While reporting for a book on the death penalty a few years ago, I learned that we turned away from more brutal methods like firing squads and hangings because of the country’s growing uneasiness about the death penalty itself.

Over time, lawmakers gave voice to the public’s collective queasiness as they tried to move away from lurid spectacles. “We’ve gone from stoning to crucifixion, to quartering, to burning people at the stake, to hanging,” a Texas state legislator, Ben Z. Grant, told his colleagues in a 1977 hearing. He worried that the latest method, the electric chair, had “become a circus sideshow.” Prison officials had to place masks on prisoners to spare witnesses from having to see their eyes pop out.

Grant proposed that Texas move to lethal injection — which had proven effective in veterinary medicine — as a more modern and humane method, and many states followed suit. But the effort to improve executions eventually had the opposite effect: In recent years, a significant number of people have convulsed on the death chamber gurney. (Firing squad executions are less likely to be botched, although last year South Carolina executioners missed a condemned man’s heart, according to a study of his autopsy.)

These botched lethal injections are an indirect consequence of wariness from the medical industry, as some doctors and nurses, citing ethical concerns, refuse to play a role in setting intravenous lines or administering drugs, leaving those with less training to do their best. Most drug companies have refused to let their products play a role in killing people, which has forced prison officials to turn to less reputable manufacturers and use more experimental drug cocktails.

During this period, some states abolished the death penalty and a few governors paused executions, often citing issues with lethal injection protocols. Many leaders also looked to more transparently harsh methods. Alabama started pumping nitrogen gas through face masks. Arizona refurbished a chamber to fill with cyanide gas, a method so similar to the gas chambers in Auschwitz that a Jewish community group sued the state, saying they were being asked “to subsidize and relive unnecessarily the same form of cruelty used in World War II atrocities.”

The firing squad was available all this time. The most logical explanations for avoiding it have to do with the upsetting visuals, the feeling that it’s old-fashioned and the possible effect on executioners. But people who participate in lethal injections routinely suffer psychologically in the long term. In 2022, Chiara Eisner at NPR interviewed over two dozen people who were involved in executions. Many were so affected by the experience that they suffered insomnia, anxiety and sui­ci­dal thoughts.

President Donald Trump oversaw 13 executions in his first term, all carried out by lethal injection. President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of most of the people on federal death row, so it’s not clear whether Trump will have anyone to execute this term.

But someday federal prison officials may train rifles on someone like Dylann Roof or Robert Bowers, both of whom committed high-profile mass shootings at places of worship. Americans will then finally have to decide what we can tolerate, after decades in which we have been able to pretend that we can kill people without a cost — to our executioners and to our own sense of ourselves.

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Federal government brings back firing squad as method of execution

The Trump administration will allow firing squads and readopt lethal injection as part of a broader push to revive the death penalty, reported The New York Times.

In an accompanying report, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said that decisions by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to pull back on capital punishment “inflicted untold damage on victims of crime, and, ultimately, to the rule of law itself.”

The Justice Department, he said, had reauthorized the use of pentobarbital to execute federal inmates and would also permit additional methods of execution, like the use of firing squads.

The 48-page report added that the Bureau of Prisons should follow the example of states that had expanded their execution protocols amid fights over the legality and availability of lethal injection drugs.

“The additional manners of execution that B.O.P. should consider adopting include the firing squad, electrocution and lethal gas — each of which the Supreme Court has found to be consistent with the Eighth Amendment,” the report said, referring to the part of the Bill of Rights that bars “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, called the moves “a stain on our nation’s history.”

Mr. Durbin accused the Justice Department of “turning back the clock by strengthening the barbaric practice of the federal death penalty — a cruel, immoral and often discriminatory form of punishment.”

President Trump had signaled the moves on his first day in office, signing an executive order to reinstitute capital punishment in the federal prison system. During the first Trump presidency, 13 people were executed on federal death row.

In 2021, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland issued a moratorium on executions of federal inmates and halted the use of a lethal drug protocol using pentobarbital. In his final days in office, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 convicted killers on federal death row.

The Trump administration faces one significant hurdle. Under the law, the federal government may only conduct executions in states that allow capital punishment and carry them out according to state protocols.

For years, federal executions have taken place in Indiana, which only allows for capital punishment by lethal injection.

The Justice Department, acknowledging that limitation in its report, recommends the federal government find a new location to conduct executions, in a state that allows other methods. Mississippi, the report states, allows executions by electrocution, or firing squad if lethal injection or other methods are not available.

The report called for the Bureau of Prisons to submit a report “detailing the options to relocate or expand federal death row, or to construct a second federal execution facility in a state that permits additional manners of execution.”

The firing squad has rarely been used in the United States, but has recently been authorized by several states as an alternative method if the states cannot procure lethal injection drugs. Before last year, the only firing squad executions in the country in modern times had been carried out by Utah, in 1977, 1996 and 2010, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group.

But in 2025, South Carolina, which had authorized the firing squad in 2021, executed three prisoners using the method.

In its Friday announcement, the administration said it was working on a regulation intended to cut years off the federal appeals process for state death penalty cases, though ultimately the courts have final say.

The department also said it planned to issue a regulation that would impose new limits on the ability of inmates sentenced to death to seek clemency or pardons from the federal government.

The report also suggested expanding the types of crimes, and the types of criminals, eligible for the federal death penalty in order to “correct gaps and deficiencies” in the current law. Congress would have to pass any such change into law.

The administration should consider proposing legislation, the report said, that would make eligible for the death penalty “murders of law enforcement officers; murders by aliens illegally in the United States; and murders constituted or committed in the commission of hate crimes, stalking, material support, or domestic violence.”

Much of the report centered on creating a new legal and regulatory framework to preserve the availability of the drug most often used to conduct executions.

Robin M. Maher, the director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the report seemed more focused on grievances with the Biden administration than a straightforward analysis of lethal injection protocol.

“It struck me as rather disingenuous in terms of reflecting the reality of the problems” with the use of pentobarbital in executions, Ms. Maher said.

Pentobarbital was first used in an execution in 2010, in Oklahoma, and soon became a common method by which to execute prisoners.

As with other drugs used in lethal injections, it faced legal challenges from prisoners and their lawyers, who said that it caused prisoners to suffer, but courts have allowed its use, and several states use it as their primary method. Still, some states have had trouble obtaining the drug because of pressure from medical and advocacy groups on drugmakers.

In January 2025, the Justice Department under Mr. Garland issued a memo saying that “there remains significant uncertainty about whether the use of pentobarbital as a single-drug lethal injection causes unnecessary pain and suffering.” The department wrote that federal authorities should not use the drug for executions until its effect was more clear.

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Arizona legislator seeks to use firing squad for executions

Republican legislators in Arizona want to bring back death by firing squad as an option for those sentenced to the death penalty, and as a requirement for people convicted of killing a law enforcement officer, reported the Arizona Mirror. 

A similar proposal, sponsored by Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin, failed in the Arizona House of Representatives last year, but Sen. Kevin Payne, R-Peoria, revived the idea this year. 

Payne’s Senate Concurrent Resolution 1049 would ask voters in November to amend the Arizona Constitution to allow death row inmates to choose to be executed by lethal injection, the gas chamber or firing squad. If the person was sentenced to death for murdering a law enforcement officer, the firing squad would be the only execution option. 

Senate Bill 1751, also sponsored by Payne, would put the same rules about firing squad executions into state statute, but would only be triggered if voters favor SCR1049. 

Firing squads would be made up of at least three volunteer shooters, and one of those shooters would be given a blank round. 

Last year, Kolodin said his firing squad proposal was inspired by an independent review of Arizona’s death penalty, commissioned by Gov. Katie Hobbs.

Hobbs spiked the draft report from that review, written by retired federal Magistrate Judge David Duncan, which detailed the numerous problems the state has encountered when trying to procure the drug used for lethal injections. Many pharmacies refuse to provide drugs for lethal injections, to avoid harassment and controversy. 

Multiple judges and advocates, including Duncan, have spoken about the use of firing squads and recommended them as a way to continue executions in a more humane manner. Duncan concluded that, although lethal injection appears to be painless and humane, the reality is that it is “fundamentally unreliable, unworkable and unacceptably prone to errors.” 

Kolodin also cited retired federal judge Alex Kozinski, who in 2014 wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the firing squad should be reinstated because it was “foolproof,” unlike lethal injection.

That isn’t true, however. In 2025, South Carolina executed Mikal Mahdi by firing squad. An autopsy revealed only two of the three shooters — all were firing live rounds — hit Mahdi, and none hit him in the heart, as is supposed to happen. Instead, he was shot in the liver and other internal organs. Pathologists said that allowed his heart to remain beating and for him to remain conscious, and in pain, as he bled to death. 

“Mr. Mahdi did experience excruciating conscious pain and suffering for about 30 to 60 seconds after he was shot,” one pathologist wrote in a report filed with the South Carolina Supreme Court.

Arizona has its own history of botched executions by lethal injection, including one in 2014 that was so bad the state didn’t conduct executions for eight years after that. 

Other states have also looked at bringing back the firing squad as a method of execution, and Idaho last year made it the state’s default form of execution. Recently, an inmate in Georgia lost a petition to have his death penalty sentence be imposed by a firing squad as opposed to lethal injection. President Donald Trump has also signaled his support of the method. 

Only one person formally registered in support of HCR1049, while 330 registered in opposition. 

Dale Baich, a former federal public defender in Arizona who has litigated death penalty cases in Ohio and Arizona, urged the legislators to vote against the resolution. 

Baich, who has taught a course on the death penalty in the Arizona State University law program for 22 years, said that the proposals present “constitutional, operational and public policy concerns.”

Although Baich said he recognizes the seriousness of death penalty cases and the profound loss of the victims’ families, Payne’s proposals would not solve the state’s death penalty problems. 

“Instead, it will likely increase litigation, costs and national scrutiny,” he said. “Recent evidence shows firing squad executions are not immune from serious failures or prolonged suffering.”

Baich pointed to Madhi’s botched execution in South Carolina. The South Carolina Supreme Court in 2024 upheld the state’s law allowing execution by firing squad, passed in 2021, saying that it wouldn’t count as unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment “unless there is a massive botch of the execution in which each member of the firing squad simply misses the inmate’s heart.”

Courtney Quinones-Machado, who said she was a disabled military combat veteran, a former corrections officer and now a chaplain for those on death row, said she “deeply opposed” Payne’s proposals. Quinones-Machado also spoke against Kolodin’s proposal last year. 

She asked the committee members to think about what participating in an execution would do to the correctional officers. 

“I, too, thought, when I went into the military, I could handle it,” Quinones-Machado said. “I came home a different person.” 

She said that her whole family suffered because of her post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism. 

“I understand you will say this is a voluntary position,” Quinones-Machado said. “I understand that most people think they can handle killing somebody. But I promise you, once you have, it is a different outlook.” 

Both of Payne’s proposals passed the committee along party lines and will next head to the full Senate for consideration. 

Sen. T.J. Shope, R- Coolidge, who voted for both measures, described himself as a “very strong supporter of the death penalty being an option, especially in some of the most heinous crimes that take place in this state.” 

Shope said he hoped that Arizona could look toward Utah for guidance on how to handle any legal issues concerning firing squad executions since that state has carried them out “successfully for decades.” 

Only Utah, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Mississippi allow execution by firing squad. 

Utah has only executed three people that way since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Those executions happened in 1977, 1996 and 2010.

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No firing squad for the state of Indiana

 A bill that would have authorized a firing squad to carry out the death penalty in Indiana failed to pass out of the House this week, reported WFYI. 

Democrats and Republicans joined together to oppose the legislation. 

Lawmakers in the House and Senate have introduced bills allowing the death penalty to be carried out by firing squad, in part because of the difficulty of obtaining the drug the state currently uses - pentobarbital. It is also expensive and has a limited shelf life.

Some states have moved to allow death by firing squads, including South Carolina, but those executions haven’t been without problems. Last year, a man executed by firing squad may have suffered before dying after the shooters missed his heart. 

“Just because lethal injection has been problematic doesn't mean Indiana or any other state is going to perform flawlessly when it comes to things like firing squad,” said Robert Dunham, Director of the Death Penalty Policy Project. 

Dunham has been watching as the bill moved through the legislature and even came to testify against the Senate version of the measure.

“One of the questions you have to ask before Indiana talks about changing its method of carrying out executions is whether Indiana should be carrying on executions at all,” Dunham said. 

Lawmakers appear to be asking the same question. 

Rep. Matt Pierce (D-Bloomington) said he opposes the death penalty altogether - not just the manner in which it is carried out. 

“Do we really think that the government and our criminal justice system is infallible?” Pierce asked. “That we can actually perform an execution and not risk killing an innocent person?”

Lawmakers' concerns with the death penalty took center stage throughout Wednesday's session. Another bill makes changes to evaluations of whether the defendant in a death penalty case has an intellectual disability. That bill passed shortly before the firing squad bill failed.

Speaking on the intellectual disability bill, Rep. Robert Morris (R-Fort Wayne), said he was happy with the work done by author Rep. Garrett Bascom (R-Lawrenceburg) on the issue. 

“I look forward to continued discussion with him to actually abolish the death penalty as a whole,” Morris said. 

Lawmakers had added provisions to the bill around media representation at executions and a requirement that a licensed psychologist would need to be in attendance to provide mental health services for executioners with any issues related to their participation. 

Representative Jim Lucas (R-Seymour) seemed frustrated that many lawmakers rose to voice their opposition, not just to the bill, but to the death penalty altogether. 

“I respect and truly appreciate everyone’s passion and emotion on this issue. But the actual issue is not the death penalty,” he said. “That’s been decided, over 200 years ago.”

The bill failed by not having a constitutional majority, which means it could come up for a vote again before Monday’s deadline. 

 A Senate version of the bill is effectively dead. 

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'Undeniable truths': Trump's push for state-sponsored death not as supported as he would have you believe

Matthew T. Mangino
Law & Crime News
January 5, 2026

Gov. Josh Shapiro has quietly issued a reprieve to a Pennsylvania inmate on death row.

This was the first reprieve of Shapiro's tenure and, although inconsistent with the actions of a number of other state executives, should not come as a surprise. Soon after he took office, Shapiro called on the legislature to repeal the death penalty. He said that his time as attorney general "revealed two undeniable truths about our capital sentencing system: that it is inherently fallible and that its consequences are irreversible."

In his reprieve, he wrote that although those sentenced to death "have committed the most terrible crimes and deserve to spend the rest of their lives behind bars," the commonwealth "should not be in the business of executing people."

Shapiro's position stands out in comparison to politicians who use the death penalty as a prop to promote or tout their "tough on crime" bona fides.

There were 47 executions in the United States last year — the most since 2010, the year I chose to examine all the executions across the country in my book, "The Executioner's Toll, 2010."

Maybe Donald Trump's executive order on the first day of his current term has had an impact on state-sponsored death. The order established that "It is the policy of the United States to ensure that the laws that authorize capital punishment are respected and faithfully implemented, and to counteract the politicians and judges who subvert the law by obstructing and preventing the execution of capital sentences."

At least one Trump adherent took the machinery of death and ran with it. Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis has presided over a record-breaking surge in capital punishment — 19 executions last year.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to expand the application of the death penalty. Not to mention, the Court denied every request to stay an execution in 2025.

In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bans, as cruel and unusual punishment, the execution of people who are intellectually disabled. The Court is poised to whittle away at its prior ruling.

Florida's Supreme Court recently upheld a 2023 state law allowing nonunanimous juries to sentence people to death. Florida law permits capital punishment with a jury recommendation of 8-4 in favor of death, the lowest standard in the nation.

Methods of execution were also controversial. Louisiana adopted nitrogen gas as a method of execution and South Carolina adopted — and used — the firing squad in 2025.

What explains the increase in executions?

Probably not public support. Recent polls show about half of Americans favor executions, but the best evidence of what people really think is found in courtrooms, where jurors have increasingly rejected the punishment.

Only 27 states, the federal government and the U.S. military, still allow the death penalty. This year, prosecutors in just 11 of those states sought the death penalty against a total of 51 people, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Jurors chose to send just 23 people to death row. Two-thirds of those death sentences came from only three states — Alabama, California, and Florida. To add some perspective, in 1996 alone 315 people were sentenced to death in the United States.

"The increase in this year's execution numbers was caused by the outlier state of Florida, where the governor set a record number of executions," said Robin Maher, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center. ​"The data show that the decisions of Gov. DeSantis and other elected officials are increasingly at odds with the decisions of American juries and the opinions of the American public."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C., New Castle, Pennsylvania.  He is a frequent contributor to Law & Crime News. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can follow him on X @MatthewTMangino.

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South Carolina executes man by firing squad

 The 43rd Execution of 2025

A South Carolina firing squad has executed a man on November 14, 2025, the third person to die by that method in the state this year, reported The Associated Press.

Three prison employees, all with live ammunition, volunteered to carry out the execution of Stephen Bryant, 44, who was pronounced dead at 6:05 p.m. Bryant killed three people in five days in a rural area of the state in 2004.

Bryant chose to die by firing squad instead of lethal injection or the electric chair. He made no final statement and briefly glanced toward the 10 witnesses before the hood was placed on his head.

The shots rang out about 55 seconds later. Bryant made no noise. The red bullseye target that marks the location of his heart flew forward off his chest. He had a few shallow breaths and then a final spasm a little over a minute later. A doctor checked him with a stethoscope for a minute before he pronounced Bryant dead.

A media witness said after the execution that a pool of wetness emerged on Bryant’s chest where he was shot. Three family members of victims who served as witnesses held hands during the execution.

Bryant is the seventh person put to death by South Carolina in 14 months after the state had a 13-year pause in executions when it couldn’t obtain lethal injection drugs.

Republican Gov. Henry McMaster denied clemency for Bryant, according to his office. No South Carolina governor has offered clemency since the death penalty resumed in the U.S. in 1976.

Final meal and memory

For his final meal, Bryant had spicy mixed seafood stir-fry, fried fish over rice, egg rolls, stuffed shrimp, two candy bars and German chocolate cake.

Bo King, a lawyer who works on death penalty cases in South Carolina, said Bryant had a genetic disorder, was a victim of sexual and physical abuse by relatives, and his mother’s binge drinking “permanently damaged his body and brain.”

“Mr. Bryant’s impairments left him unable to endure the tormenting memories of his childhood,” King wrote in a statement.

King said Bryant “showed grace and courage in forgiving his family and great love for those in and outside of his prison.”

“We will remember his unlikely friendships, his fierce protectiveness, and his love for nature, the water, and the world,” King wrote.

Firing squad vs. lethal injection drugs

The firing squad has a long and violent history around the world. Death by a hail of bullets has been used to punish mutinies and desertion in armies, as frontier justice in America’s Old West and as a tool of terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

But in recent years, it’s been revived in the U.S. Some lawmakers say it’s the quickest and most humane way to execute a person.

That’s since a number of botched executions by other methods, including lethal injection drugs. South Carolina and other states have struggled to maintain adequate supplies of lethal injection drugs.

In part because of this, South Carolina paused executions for 13 years. The state then restarted in September 2024, after which four men have been executed by lethal injection and three by firing squad. The state is among several where the electric chair is still legal.

King, the lawyer speaking on Bryant’s behalf, said each of the seven executions have been “brutal and shameful.”

“None has made South Carolina safer or more just,” King said.

The three other recent firing squad executions in the U.S. have been in Utah with none in that state since 2010. The method is also still legal in Idaho and a backup method if others aren’t available in Oklahoma and Mississippi.

The 2004 killings in rural South Carolina

Bryant admitted to killing Willard “TJ” Tietjen in October 2004 after stopping by his secluded home in rural Sumter County and saying he had car trouble.

Tietjen was shot several times. Bryant then answered Tietjen’s phone after it rang several times telling both his wife and daughter that he was the prowler and had killed them, prosecutors said.

Bryant also killed two men — one before and one after Tietjen. He gave the men rides and when they got out to urinate on the side of the road, he shot them in the back, authorities said.

During the search, officers stopped nearly everyone driving on dirt roads in the area just east of Columbia, and told people to be leery of anyone they did not know asking for help.

Bryant is the 43rd man killed by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S. At least 14 others are scheduled to be put to death during the remainder of 2025 and next year.

Bryant is also the 50th person executed in South Carolina since the state restarted the death penalty 40 years ago.

What happens during a firing squad execution

The curtain opens in the death chamber of the prison with fewer than a dozen witnesses sitting behind bulletproof glass.

The person is strapped into a chair. A white square with a red bull’s-eye target is placed over his heart by a doctor. Their lawyer can read a final statement. A prison employee then places a hood over the person’s head, walks across the small room and pulls open a black shade where the firing squad waits.

Without an audible or visual warning to witnesses, the shooters then fire high-powered rifles from 15 feet (4.6 meters) away.

A doctor will then come out within a minute or two, examine him and declare him dead.

Lawyers for the last man executed by a firing squad said the shooters nearly missed the heart of Mikal Mahdi. They suggested by barely hitting the bottom of the heart that Mahdi was in agonizing pain for three or four times longer than experts say he would have been if his heart had been hit directly.

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CREATORS: Has The Death Penalty Become Arbitrary and Capricious?

 Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
August 19, 2025

Those who write about the death penalty often do so from a certain bias. I wanted to take a crack at writing about the ultimate punishment without bias. McFarland & Company helped me make that effort a reality.

My book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" examined every execution in 2010. One of those executions was that of Cal Coburn Brown. His perspective on the death penalty was both disturbing and provocative.

Brown was executed by the state of Washington. He had brutally sexually assaulted, tortured, and murdered a young woman. He left her body in the trunk of a car at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport.

Brown then jumped on an airplane and went to meet a woman in Palm Springs, Calif. He was torturing her when she managed to escape and notify the police.

Brown spent more than 16 years on Washington's Death Row. As he lay strapped to a gurney awaiting lethal injection, he protested what he perceived to be the unfairness of his sentence. He complained that criminals who had killed many more people, such as "Green River killer" Gary Ridgway, were serving life sentences while he was about to receive the death penalty.

Ridgway is a serial killer, both diabolical and prolific. He was convicted of murdering 49 women in the northwest between 1982 and 1998. Ridgway's victims were women in vulnerable circumstances, including underage runaways. Ridgway strangled his victims and dumped their bodies in secluded areas, often returning to the bodies to engage in acts of necrophilia.

In his final words, Cal Brown said, "I only killed one victim ... I cannot really see that there is true justice. Hopefully, sometime in the future, that gets straightened out."

There does seem to be some inconsistency in the application of the death penalty. Let's start with the fact that 23 states don't have the death penalty, and another 10 that have not carried out an execution in the last 10 years.

For instance, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer escaped death at the hands of the government because Wisconsin had outlawed the death penalty in 1853.

David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, escaped the death penalty in New York. Berkowitz killed six people in New York City in the 1970s. He terrorized an entire city, and for that matter, an entire nation.

Berkowitz was not sentenced to death. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder; as a result, the death penalty was not an option under New York's sentencing scheme. It didn't matter — New York had not executed a killer since 1963.

Charles Manson, responsible for ten murders, including the gruesome murder of pregnant movie star Sharon Tate, was sentenced to death but never executed. Manson's sentence was commuted to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court declared the imposition of the death penalty arbitrary in 1972.

Those serial killers who didn't escape the executioner include John Wayne Gracy who murdered 33 women in Texas between 1972 and 1978; Ted Bundy who murdered as many as 30 women across the country, often sexual assaulting them and engaging in necrophilia with their dead bodies; the "Freeway Killer," William Bonin, responsible for 14 killings and the rare female serial killer Aileen Wuornos who was executed for six murders in 2002.

There seems to be no explanation for sparing the life of the diabolical modern-day mass killer — Byran Kohberger.

Kohberger was offered a plea bargain to life without parole, without being required to explain his motive for killing four young college students in Idaho. It is not as though Idaho doesn't have, or use, the death penalty. Just this year, the state adopted the firing squad as its primary form of execution.

To further complicate matters, the evidence against Kohberger was overwhelming. He had recently purchased a KA-BAR knife — the alleged murder weapon. His DNA was on the knife sheath. He was observed on video surveillance near the victims' apartment. Kohberger's cellphone put him in the vicinity of the murders. Even more surprising, no mitigating evidence was presented by his lawyers.

Kohberger dodging the death penalty supports, yet again, that the death penalty has become arbitrary and capricious.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Utah set to send wheelchair bound man with dementia to firing squad

 A Utah judge set an execution date for a man with dementia who has been on death row for 37 years, even as his lawyers file appeals and argue his condition is worsening, reported The Associated Press.

Ralph Leroy Menzies, 67, is set to be executed Sept. 5 for abducting and killing Utah mother of three Maurine Hunsaker in 1986. When given a choice decades ago, Menzies selected a firing squad as his method of execution. He would become only the sixth U.S. prisoner executed by firing squad since 1977.

Judge Matthew Bates signed the death warrant a month after he ruled Menzies “consistently and rationally” understands why he is facing execution despite recent cognitive decline. Attorneys for Menzies have petitioned the court for a reassessment, but Bates said Wednesday that the pending appeal was not a basis to stop him from setting a date.

Bates did, however, schedule a July 23 hearing to evaluate the new competency petition. Menzies’ attorneys say his dementia has gotten so severe that he uses a wheelchair, is dependent on oxygen and cannot understand his legal case.

“We remain hopeful that the courts or the clemency board will recognize the profound inhumanity of executing a man who is experiencing steep cognitive decline and significant memory loss,” said Lindsey Layer, an attorney for Menzies. “Taking the life of someone with a terminal illness who is no longer a threat to anyone and whose mind and identity have been overtaken by dementia serves neither justice nor human decency.”

The Utah Attorney General’s Office has “full confidence” in the judge’s decision, Assistant Attorney General Daniel Boyer said.

The U.S. Supreme Court has at times spared prisoners with dementia from execution, including an Alabama man in 2019 who had killed a police officer. If a defendant cannot understand why they are being put to death, the high court said, then an execution is not carrying out the retribution that society is seeking.

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South Carolina 'sharp shooters' miss heart during firing squad execution

The wounds were on the lowest area of the chest, near the abdomen, and the bullets had a “downward” trajectory mostly missing the heart

A South Carolina firing squad botched the execution of Mikal Mahdi last month, with shooters missing the target area on the man’s heart, causing him to suffer a prolonged death, according to autopsy records and his attorneys, reported The Guardian.

Mahdi, 42, was shot dead by corrections employees last month in the second firing squad execution this year in South Carolina. The state has aggressively revived capital punishment over the last seven months and brought back the controversial firearm method that has rarely been used in the modern death penalty era.

Autopsy documents and a photo reviewed by the Guardian, along with analysis commissioned by Mahdi’s lawyers, suggest the execution did not occur according to protocol, and that Mahdi endured pain beyond the “10-to-15 second” window of consciousness that was expected.

Mahdi’s lawyers submitted the records to the South Carolina supreme court on Thursday.

Mahdi was sentenced to death in 2006, and the execution was carried out on 11 April. On the evening of his killing, Mahdi was brought into the state’s execution chamber, strapped to a chair and had a red bullseye target placed over his heart. Witnesses were positioned behind bulletproof glass, and three prison employees on the firing squad stood roughly 15ft (4.6 metres) away.

Officials placed a hood over Mahdi’s head before the staff fired, according to an Associated Press reporter, who was a witness. As shots were fired, Mahdi cried out and his arms flexed, and after roughly 45 seconds, he groaned twice, the AP said. His breaths continued for around 80 seconds, then a doctor examined him for a minute. He was declared dead roughly four minutes after the shots.

South Carolina regulations call for the shooters to fire bullets “in the heart … using ammunition calculated to do maximum damage to – and thereby immediately stop – the heart”.

But the autopsy report commissioned by the SCDC indicates there were only two gunshot wounds, not three, and that the bullets largely missed his heart before hitting his pancreas, liver and lower lung, Mahdi’s lawyers say.

Dr Bradley Marcus, the pathologist who performed the autopsy for the state, described two roughly half-inch gunshot wounds on Mahdi’s chest, but suggested three shots might have been fired, writing: “It is believed that gunshot wound labeled (A) represents two gunshot wound pathways.”

South Carolina’s death chamber in Columbia, including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left. Photograph: AP

But Dr Jonathan Arden, a forensic pathologist retained by Mahdi’s lawyers, wrote in a report submitted to the court that it would be “extraordinarily uncommon” for multiple bullets to enter through one wound. Arden also interviewed Marcus for his report and said the state’s pathologist was “surprised to find only two wounds” and took a photograph to send to the SCDC, which clearly showed two wounds. Arden said Marcus also acknowledged the odds were “remote” that two shots made a single wound.

Arden said the wounds were on the lowest area of Mahdi’s chest, near the abdomen, and that the bullets had a “downward” trajectory that mostly missed the heart.

In the firing squad execution of Brad Sigmon, in March, the bullets “obliterated both ventricles of the heart”, but in Mahdi’s body, there were only four perforations of the right ventricle, Arden wrote.

Arden said Marcus, too, “expected the entrance wounds to be higher” and “did not expect to find such severe damage to the liver”, according to Arden’s summary of their call.

“If the procedure is done correctly, the heart will be disrupted, immediately eliminating all circulation,” wrote Arden, who previously testified in litigation challenging firing squads. Because “the shooters missed the intended target area”, Mahdi continued to have circulation, allowing him to remain conscious for up to a minute, said Arden, noting the AP’s report of his groaning after 45 seconds.

Mahdi suffered a “more prolonged death process than was expected had the execution been conducted successfully according to the protocol” and experienced “excruciating conscious pain and suffering for about 30 to 60 seconds”, Arden concluded.

“Among the questions that remain: did one member of the execution team miss Mr Mahdi entirely? Did they not fire at all? How did the two who did shoot Mr Mahdi miss his heart?,” Mahdi’s attorneys wrote to the court. “Did they flinch or miss because of inadequate training? Or was the target on Mr Mahdi’s chest misplaced? The current record provides no answers.”

Arden’s report noted the autopsy did not involve X-rays or an examination of Mahdi’s clothes to assess the target’s placement.

Chrysti Shain, the director of communications for SCDC, “strongly refuted Mahdi’s lawyers’ claims. She said all three weapons fired simultaneously and that no fragments were found in the room. She said all three bullets did strike Mahdi, pointing at Marcus’ conclusion that it ‘is believed that gunshot wound labeled (A) represents two gunshot wound pathways’.”

She added the autopsy concluded all three bullets struck Mahdi’s heart, before hitting other organs.

When the state supreme court issued a ruling authorizing firing squads last year, it assessed whether the method was considered “cruel” based on the “risk of unnecessary and excessive conscious pain”. The court, citing Arden’s testimony in the litigation, concluded it was not cruel because the pain, even if excruciating, would only last 10 to 15 seconds “unless there is a massive botch of the execution in which each member of the firing squad simply misses the inmate’s heart”.

Mahdi’s lawyers said “a massive botch is exactly what happened”: “Mr Mahdi elected the firing squad, and this court sanctioned it, based on the assumption that SCDC could be entrusted to carry out its straightforward steps: locating the heart; placing a target over it; and hitting that target. That confidence was clearly misplaced.”

“I don’t think any reasonable, objective observer can look at what happened and think we can keep setting execution dates,” David Weiss, Madhi’s lawyer who sat as a witness, said in an interview. “I heard Mikal’s cries of pain and agony, and I don’t want that to happen to somebody else.”

South Carolina had ceased executions for 13 years as it struggled to obtain lethal injection supplies, but resumed last year, directing people on death row to choose either firing squad, electric chair or lethal injection.

Weiss is a federal public defender and part of the capital habeas unit for the fourth circuit, which has represented four of the five people executed in rapid succession by South Carolina. The lawyers have said that two of the executions by injections of pentobarbital, a sedative, took more than 20 minutes to cause death, in one case appearing to lead to a condition akin to suffocation and drowning. Mahdi chose what he considered the “lesser of three evils”, the attorneys said.

“Lethal injections were adopted because they were supposed to be more humane with a lower risk of error, but as more information became available, we realized it was actually quite tortuous,” said Weiss. “And the intent of the firing squad was that in some ways it would be simpler, quicker, more straightforward, harder to make mistakes. But they couldn’t get that right either.”

A human rights report last year chronicled 73 botched lethal injection executions in the last 50 years, which have disproportionately affected Black people on death row. Alabama began using an untested nitrogen gas method last year, claiming it was “perhaps the most humane” option, but in its first case, witnesses reported that the condemned man’s body began violently shaking, and it took roughly 22 minutes to kill him.

There have only been three other firing squad executions in the last 50 years, though Idaho recently adopted legislation making shootings the main method of killing.

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South Carolina used firing squad for the second time in five weeks

The 12th Execution in 2025

A firing squad on April 10, 2025 executed Mikal Mahdi a South Carolina man who killed an off-duty police officer, the second time the rare execution method has been used by the state in the past five weeks, reported The Associated Press.

Mikal Mahdi gave no final statement and did not look to his right toward the nine witnesses in the room behind bulletproof glass and bars once the curtain opened.

He took a few deep breaths during the 45 seconds between when the hood was put over his head and when the shots rang out, fired by three volunteers who are prison employees at a distance of about 15 feet (4.6 meters).

Mahdi, 42, cried out as the bullets hit him, and his arms flexed. A white target with the red bull’s-eye over his heart was pushed into the wound in his chest.

Mahdi groaned two more times about 45 seconds after that. His breaths continued for about 80 seconds before he appeared to take one final gasp.

A doctor checked him for a little over a minute, and he was declared dead at 6:05 p.m., less than four minutes after the shots were fired.

Firing squad executions resume

Mahdi’s execution came a little over a month after Brad Sigmon was put to death March 7, in the first U.S. firing squad death in 15 years and the fourth since 1976. The others all occurred in Utah.

The firing squad is an execution method with a long and violent history around the world. It has been used to punish mutinies and desertion in armies, as frontier justice in America’s Old West and as a tool of terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

But South Carolina lawmakers saw it as the quickest and most humane method, especially with the uncertainty in obtaining lethal injection drugs.

In a statement Mahdi’s attorney, assistant federal public defender David Weiss, called the execution a “horrifying act that belongs in the darkest chapters of history, not in a civilized society.”

Mahdi had the choice of dying by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair.

“Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils,” Weiss said. “Mikal chose the firing squad instead of being burned and mutilated in the electric chair, or suffering a lingering death on the lethal injection gurney.”

Mahdi is the fifth inmate executed by South Carolina in less than eight months as the state makes its way through prisoners who ran out of appeals during an unintended 13-year pause on executions in the state.

Mahdi’s is the 12th execution in the U.S. this year. Twenty-five prisoners in nine states were killed in all of 2024. Alabama and Louisiana have killed inmates by nitrogen gas. Florida, Oklahoma, Arizona and Texas have executed men by lethal injection, while South Carolina has used both the firing squad and lethal injection.

Mahdi’s last meal was ribeye steak cooked medium, mushroom risotto, broccoli, collard greens, cheesecake and sweet tea, prison officials said.

The crime

Mahdi admitted killing Orangeburg Public Safety officer James Myers in 2004, shooting him at least eight times before burning his body. Myers’ wife found him in the couple’s Calhoun County shed, which had been the backdrop to their wedding 15 months earlier.

Myers’ shed was a short distance through the woods from a gas station where Mahdi tried but failed to buy gas with a stolen credit card and left behind a vehicle he had carjacked in Columbia. Mahdi was arrested in Florida while driving Myers’ unmarked police pickup truck.

Mahdi also admitted to the killing three days earlier of Christopher Boggs, a Winston-Salem, North Carolina, convenience store clerk who was shot twice in the head as he checked Mahdi’s ID. Mahdi was sentenced to life in prison for that killing.

Final appeal

Mahdi’s final appeal was rejected this week by both the U.S. and South Carolina Supreme Courts. His lawyers said Mahdi’s original attorneys put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that did not call on relatives, teachers or others who knew him and ignored the impact of months spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

The defense’s case to spare Mahdi’s life before a judge lasted only about 30 minutes. It “didn’t even span the length of a Law & Order episode, and was just as superficial,” Mahdi’s lawyers wrote.

Mahdi’s earliest memory was his father slamming his mother through a glass table and later lying to his son and saying his mother was dead. Mahdi’s father pulled him out of school in fifth grade when officials suggested he needed behavioral help, defense lawyers said.

Prosecutors said Mahdi constantly used brutality to solve his problems. As a death row prisoner, he stabbed a guard and hit another worker with a concrete block. Mahdi was caught three times with tools he could have used to escape, including a piece of sharpened metal that could be used as a knife, according to prison records.

“The nature of the man is violence,” prosecutors wrote.

Weiss, Mahdi’s attorney, said his client died in full view of a system “that failed him at every turn — from childhood to his final breath.”

Busy death chamber

Mahdi’s death is the end of a busy time in South Carolina’s death chamber. He is the fifth inmate killed since September after the state had not had any executions since 2011. No other inmates are out of appeals but several are close.

The state was able to restart executions after lawmakers allowed the firing squad and passed a bill allowing suppliers of the pentobarbital to remain secret, along with the exact procedures used to kill inmates and the names of prison employees on execution teams, including the firing squad shooters.

Along with Sigmon’s firing squad death last month, three other South Carolina prisoners have been executed via lethal injection since September.

The state now has 26 inmates on its death row. Just one man has been sentenced to death in the past decade.

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South Carolina executes convicted murderer by firing squad

 The 6th Execution of 2025

The state of South Carolina executed a convicted murderer by firing squad on March 7, 2025 in the first such execution in the United States since 2010, reported The New York Times.

The inmate, Brad Sigmon, 67, was declared dead at 6:08 p.m. after a firing squad shot three bullets at the target placed over his heart, the State Department of Corrections said.

A judge had ordered Mr. Sigmon, who was convicted of beating his ex-girlfriend’s parents to death with a baseball bat in 2001, to choose from three methods of execution: lethal injection, electrocution or firing squad. His lawyer, Gerald King, said that Mr. Sigmon had chosen to be shot because he had concerns about South Carolina’s lethal injection process.

According to three reporters who witnessed the execution, Mr. Sigmon took several deep breaths before the shots were fired. After he was shot, his chest rose and fell about two times and his arms stiffened, according to the reporters, who were from The Associated Press, The Post and Courier and WYFF, a local TV station.

Mr. Sigmon is the first inmate in South Carolina history to be killed in such a manner. Polls show that a majority of Americans favor the death penalty, but many view the firing squad as an archaic form of justice. But as lethal injection drugs have become harder to obtain, and have at times resulted in botched executions, several states have recently legalized firing squads as an execution method.

Utah had previously been the only state to use a firing squad in modern times; it did so in 2010, 1996 and 1977.

Mr. Sigmon was executed in the death chamber at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, the state capital. He was strapped to a metal chair in a corner of the room, sitting 15 feet from a wall with a rectangular opening. Behind that wall was the three-person firing squad, facing Mr. Sigmon through the opening.

Witnesses sat in chairs along one wall of the chamber behind bullet-resistant glass. They could see the prisoner, but not the firing squad’s rifles through the opening.

In a final statement read by his lawyer, Mr. Sigmon said he wanted his message “to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty.”

“Nowhere does God in the New Testament give man the authority to kill another man,” he said in the statement.

Mr. Sigmon wore a black jumpsuit and his mouth was covered. He could slightly move his head, witnesses said, and he tilted it toward the witness room before nodding toward Mr. King, his lawyer, and appearing to exchange words with him. Witnesses said it was not clear what was said.

A hood was then placed over Mr. Sigmon’s head. There was no countdown before the shots were simultaneously fired.

The group of witnesses also included three members of the victims’ family and Mr. Sigmon’s spiritual adviser, the Rev. Hillary Taylor.

Mr. Sigmon’s lawyers had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case and issue a stay of execution, but the court did not grant one. Mr. Sigmon had also asked Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, for clemency, but that was denied by Mr. McMaster, who has not granted clemency to a prisoner on death row since the state restarted executions last year.

Shortly before the execution, dozens of protesters held signs outside the correctional facility that read “Thou shalt not kill” and “All life is precious.”

Ms. Taylor said that Mr. Sigmon had become an astute reader of the Bible and served as an informal chaplain to other prisoners. She added that he chose to share his last meal, a large bucket of KFC fried chicken, with his fellow inmates.

Because of a shield law passed in 2023, little is known about the members of the firing squad. According to a spokeswoman with the Department of Corrections, they train every month, year-round. A 2022 news release about renovations to the death chamber said that the firing squad consisted of department employees who volunteered to take part. They shoot a type of ammunition often used in police rifles.

Three other states — Mississippi, Oklahoma and Idaho — allow the firing squad as a secondary method of execution, to be used only if a lethal injection drug cannot be obtained. In Idaho, the State Senate recently passed a bill that would make death by firing squad the primary method.

The firing squad became legal in South Carolina in 2021, after the state passed a law that allowed death by electric chair or firing squad as options for people on death row. Inmates sued the state, claiming that both methods were cruel, corporal or unusual punishments, which are prohibited by the State Constitution.

The South Carolina Supreme Court, which is dominated by Republican appointees, ruled last year that both methods were legal, writing that neither could be considered cruel or unusual because prisoners could choose their method.

Since that ruling, the state’s Department of Corrections has now executed four people, three of whom chose to be killed by lethal injection. But Mr. King said that Mr. Sigmon had chosen a firing squad because of his concerns about South Carolina’s process with the lethal injection drug, pentobarbital.

Mr. King has argued in court that the Department of Corrections had not shared basic facts about the drug that one “would want to know to feel confident that they’ll work as intended,” such as how it is stored, how quickly it expires and how it has been tested. South Carolina does not make its lethal injection protocol public.

A department spokeswoman said last month that the agency had turned over all information about the drug in litigation and that it had “sworn to the effectiveness” of it.

Lindsey Vann, the executive director of the nonprofit Justice 360, represented two inmates in the state, Richard B. Moore and Marion Bowman Jr., whose recent executions by lethal injection did not go as planned.

Ms. Vann said that in both instances, a second dose of pentobarbital was administered 10 minutes after the first, and that in both cases the men did not die for more than 20 minutes after the procedure began. (Mr. Moore initially chose to be executed by a firing squad but changed his mind after the state procured lethal injection drugs.)

Mr. King said Mr. Sigmon felt that “the firing squad is what is left, given what he knows about the electric chair, and what he doesn’t know about lethal injection.” Mr. King said his client was feeling a “mix of fear and frustration.”

“Everything about this barbaric, state-sanctioned atrocity, from the choice to the method itself, is abjectly cruel,” Mr. King said in a statement.

Mr. Sigmon’s lawyers have said that he suffered from an inherited mental illness and childhood brain damage. Those factors, they argued, contributed to him murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents, David and Gladys Larke. After he killed them, Mr. Sigmon tried to kidnap his ex-girlfriend.

The victims’ grandson, Ricky Sims, told The Greenville News that Mr. Sigmon needed to pay for what he had done. “He took away two people who would have done anything for their family,” he said.

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South Carolina poised to use firing squad for first time in state history

 The overhaul of South Carolina’s death chamber was completed three years ago. Now, a team of sharpshooters is practicing its aim for what is poised to be the first firing squad execution in the state’s history on March  7, 2025. according to NBC News.

Death by firing squad remains an extremely uncommon form of capital punishment in the United States, with only three carried out since the death penalty was ruled constitutional in 1976. All three occurred in Utah — the last in 2010, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

Brad Sigmon, the condemned South Carolina prisoner, opted for firing squad over the state’s primary method of electrocution or the more widely used practice of lethal injection.

“He’s made the best choice that he can, but the fact that he had to make it at all is horrifying,” said Sigmon’s lawyer, Gerald “Bo” King.

Sigmon, 67, who was convicted in 2002 in the beating deaths of his ex-girlfriend’s parents, declined lethal injection, King said, because of concerns over its use in the last three executions in South Carolina.

In a filing last week asking the South Carolina Supreme Court to halt Sigmon’s execution, his legal team noted the state’s autopsy report for Marion Bowman Jr., who was put to death by lethal injection last month, indicates he was given “10 grams of pentobarbital” and “died with his lungs massively swollen with blood and fluid,” akin to “drowning.”

That amount of pentobarbital is double what corrections officials had attested to needing under the state’s lethal injection protocol, according to the filing.

King argued that the state must disclose more information about the protocol and the quality of its pentobarbital on hand in order for Sigmon to have made a fair choice.

State prosecutors said in a response Friday to Sigmon’s filing that because he chose death by firing squad, he has “waived any argument about lethal injection.” They also contend the second dose of pentobarbital was administered as outlined under the state’s protocol and nothing was unusual with how the other inmates died.

With Sigmon’s execution drawing closer, barring a last-minute reprieve, the return of a firing squad execution is also raising questions about whether it is ushering a new — yet old — chapter in America’s use of the death penalty.

During the Civil War, firing squads were common for executing soldiers for desertion; in some cases, they would be blindfolded and tied to stakes before being shot. A century ago, Nevada executed a prisoner using an automated machine that fired the bullets so that no person had to.

In the modern era of capital punishment, only a handful of states, including Mississippi and Oklahoma, allow for the method, with South Carolina legalizing it in 2021 and Idaho following two years later amid a nationwide shortage of lethal injection drugs.

Corinna Barrett Lain, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said states are moving to the firing squad because lethal injection has been problematic, with reports of “botched” incidents in recent years.

“States can’t get the drugs. They can’t get qualified medical professionals to do it,” Lain, the author of the upcoming book “Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection,” said in an email.

“The firing squad is too honest, too explicit about what the death penalty is. People tend to think it’s barbaric and archaic,” Lain said, adding: “In that way, it may start some very important, and long overdue conversations about the death penalty in this country.”

Utah’s use of the firing squad

The last firing squad execution, in 2010, lasted about four minutes, from when the death chamber’s curtain was lifted to when the bullets struck Utah inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner, according to media witnesses.

Gardner, 49, was sentenced to death after fatally shooting an attorney, Michael Burdell, and wounding a bailiff, George Kirk, as he attempted to flee a courthouse in 1985. Gardner was already in custody for the killing of a bartender, Melvyn John Otterstrom, a year earlier.

Prison staff members strapped Gardner to a chair, and after he declined to make a final statement, fit a black hood over his head. A small white target with a bull’s-eye pattern was fastened to his chest. Five shooters — volunteers described as certified police officers — fired .30-caliber Winchester rifles from behind a wall with a gun port.

The number of shooters helped to ensure one of the bullets was fatal, although one firearm was also fed a blank so that each shooter was uncertain who was directly responsible for the death, officials said.

Media witnesses described Gardner appearing to flinch and move his arm after being shot, leaving them to wonder if he was still alive and would have to be shot again. But a medical examiner declared him dead a short time later, they said.

Jennifer Dobner, who covered the execution for The Associated Press, said it was a “very clinical and precise procedure.” Fifteen years later, she still recalls a “boom, boom” from the rapid gunfire, then “the target on his chest kind of blew up, the fabric kind of blew up,” and the room fell silent. The execution was traumatic for the Gardner family, she said.

“They have their own trauma from losing their brother this way. Not that they condone anything that he did, but it is a very extreme form of punishment,” Dobner said.

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