The Horror of Execution by Firing Squad

Sometimes, in the quiet of the night, attorney Gerald Bo King sees his client, Brad Sigmon, die — again and again. The silence reminds him of the moments in the death chamber before the guns went off.

On March 7, 2025, King watched as the curtain opened at 6 p.m., revealing Broad River Correctional Institution’s execution chamber and Sigmon, strapped to a slanted chair. His chin was held in place by restraints, and there was a large target on his chest. “The most unsettling aspect of it was the mechanics,” King recalls. Sigmon was dressed in black — which he joked was slimming — but was really meant to hide the blood. A hood hid his face.

At 6:05 p.m., three blasts erupted from hidden ports, and before King could even register the sound of the shotguns wielded by prison volunteers, he watched as the target on his friend and client’s chest vaporized. “Suddenly there was this big hole in the middle of his chest that blood was spilling out of,” King recalls. Sigmon didn’t die instantly; he was pronounced dead three minutes after the shots were fired, his blood pooling in a basin below.

In South Carolina, where he was executed, Sigmon was given the option to die by lethal injection, electric chair, or the firing squad. Given how often lethal injection is botched, and the fear of being “cook[ed] alive” by the electric chair, Sigmon chose the firing squad, making him the first person to be executed via that method in the U.S. in 15 years.

“It’s an impossible experience to witness something like that without imagining yourself in the role of everyone else there, in part, because it is so strange, surreal,” says King. “It is not something that you get over; it is not something that affects you in any kind of predictable way. There’s something deeper than grief about seeing someone you fought for for years die.”

Last week, the Justice Department announced its intention to bring the firing squad back to federal prisons. The method has long been considered “more humane” than other forms of execution — in that it’s more immediate and harder to botch — but as Sigmon’s execution demonstrates, and as death penalty critics argue, there is no truly painless way to kill someone. The revival of an execution method many see as barbaric is most likely a symptom of a president and an administration obsessed with violence, and there’s no telling where the bloodlust will end.

“Our position is that there is no good way to kill somebody, not by lethal injection, not by firing squad, not by gas, not by electrocution, not by hanging,” says Alli Sullivan, communications coordinator for Death Penalty Action. “Trump loves having the power to kill people. And I think, on some level, what we’re seeing right now is an extension of him being frustrated that he doesn’t get to kill those 37 people whose sentences were commuted by Biden.”

The death penalty has been in flux since Trump first took office in 2016. He has long been a big proponent of the practice, and ended his first administration with a killing spree that saw 13 federal inmates executed before Joe Biden took office. He has also previously discussed bringing back firing squads, hangings, and even execution by guillotine.

“He had a particular affinity for the firing squad, because it seemed more dramatic, rather than how we do it, putting a syringe in people and putting them to sleep,” a former White House official told us in 2023. “He was big on the idea of executing large numbers of drug dealers and drug lords because he’d say, ‘These people don’t care about anything,’ and that they run their drug empire and their deals from prison anyways, and then they get back out on the street, get all their money again, and keep committing crimes … and therefore, they need to be eradicated, not jailed.”

Biden, in turn, commuted the sentences of 37 people on federal death row right before Christmas in 2024, stoking Trump’s ire. “Also, to the 37 most violent criminals, who killed, raped, and plundered like virtually no one before them, but were just given, incredibly, a pardon by Sleepy Joe Biden,” the current president wrote on Christmas Day. “I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky ‘souls’ but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL!”

When he returned to office, Trump ratcheted up his dedication to the death penalty, despite the fact that it’s at an all-time nadir in popularity in the U.S. He released an executive order in January 2025 reversing Biden’s 2021 moratorium on federal executions, and in his most recent move, expressed a desire to “restore its solemn duty to seek, obtain, and implement lawful capital sentences — clearing the way for the Department to carry out executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals.”

The Justice Department has now released a 52-page document laying out plans to reauthorize lethal injection protocols in federal prisons (which Biden withdrew days before Trump took office due to concerns over unnecessary pain and suffering), speed the journey from the court room to the death chamber, and bring back the firing squad and other execution methods.

“The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”

However, as Robin M. Maher, executive director of Death Penalty Information Center, points out: “We’re at a five-decade low in terms of public support for the death penalty and opposition has never been higher than it is this year. There are so many concerns about use of the death penalty that it is really somewhat bewildering that the DOJ has decided to prioritize expanding the death penalty and the ways in which we can execute people instead of the other priorities that are more important to the American people.”

The firing squad was used as the de facto form of execution until the turn of the 20th century, according to Frank R. Baumgartner, a Richard J. Richardson distinguished professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Around 1895, they started with electrocutions,” he adds. “The electric chair was supposed to be a more civilized and more technologically advanced system. And the same was true of lethal injection.”

Since 1977, only a handful of people have been killed via firing squad, starting with Gary Gilmore, who died in a display papers called a “grisly circus.” Five states — Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah — currently offer the firing squad as an execution method.

Sigmore’s execution in South Carolina was the first by firing squad in years, followed by Mikal Mahdi (April 2025), and Stephen Bryant (November 2025), both also in South Carolina. Mahdi’s lawyers allege that he was only shot two times, instead of three, and thus not shot in the heart, leading to a prolonged death.

“Firing squads have often been talked about as being more of a sure thing without complications than lethal injection,” says Maher. “[But] methods of execution cannot be guaranteed to go without anomalies.”

“It’s definitely possible to botch the firing squad; the person dies, but they die of loss of blood, so it takes some time,” adds Baumgartner. “So it’s got to be a terrible thing to observe.”

Regardless of the method, executions can be traumatizing for everyone involved. Prison employees have complained about the rate of executions and its effect on their mental health. In 2022, there were so many executions at Oklahoma State Penitentiary that the state’s attorney general and the head of the prison services both requested that executions be staggered due to “lasting trauma” and “psychological toll.” The court has not granted the request.

King, Sigmore’s lawyer, points out that we don’t often consider the effect such a thing has on prison employees. “I just keep thinking about the guards who had to put him in the chair and strap him down around his chin and around his waist,” he says of his own experience with Sigmon. “It’s just really disturbing.”

And Oklahoma staffers were only witnessing lethal injections. “The firing squad and hanging make no pretense about the violent nature of the act,” says Baumgartner. “But people haven’t been comfortable with that honesty, because the honesty is quite brutal, and that involves blood, and seeing somebody bleed to death.”

Regarding Trump’s recent efforts to restore the firing squad to federal prisons, Maher points out that it could be more saber-rattling than anything else — at least should a Democrat be elected in 2028.

“These ideas will need to be published, and they will be open for public comment,” she says. “Protocols will need to be developed and new facilities will need to be built to enable these methods of execution to be used. It will require a tremendous investment of taxpayer dollars and government resources in implementing these new methods of execution. And I don’t think that the American public is going to be thrilled with the idea that is where their resources and taxpayer dollars are being spent.” Plus, there are currently only three people on federal death row, and none of them are eligible yet to receive a date, she says.

Still, Maher concedes, “I have learned not to predict what the Trump administration will do or say. I think most people have learned the error of doing so, because really, anything can happen.”