The Crack of Rifles, Then Silence: What a Firing Squad Execution Was Like

One of the three media witnesses to the execution of Brad Sigmon in South Carolina on Friday describes what he saw.

I’ve now watched through glass and bars as 11 men were put to death at a South Carolina prison. None of the previous 10 prepared me for watching the firing squad death of Brad Sigmon on Friday night.

I might now be unique among U.S. reporters: I’ve witnessed three different methods, including nine lethal injections and an electric-chair execution. I can still hear the thunk of the breaker falling 21 years later.

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

In the two weeks since I knew how Mr. Sigmon was going to die, I read up on firing squads and the damage that can be done by the bullets. I looked at the autopsy photos of the last man shot to death by the state, in Utah in 2010.

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

But you don’t know everything when some of the execution protocols are kept secret, and it’s impossible to know what to expect when you’ve never seen someone shot at close range right in front of you.