GREENVILLE – The execution of a man in the state on death row for nearly two decades in the murder of his ex-girlfriend’s parents in Greenville County was postponed after South Carolina’s highest court ruled that he must live as long. time the state cannot kill you in a lethal injection.
The state Supreme Court on February 4 dismissed the execution of Brad Keith Sigmon in a decision that reflects a legal strategy that delayed the execution of another rural man last November.
The state has not executed a prisoner in nearly 10 years, because drug makers do not sell the necessary lethal drug cocktail without legal guarantee that their identities would be kept secret.
State law requires a prisoner on death row to choose to die by lethal injection or electrocution. If the lethal injection is chosen, the State Department of Correction cannot use the electric chair.
Brad Sigmon killed his girlfriend’s parents in Greenville in 2001.
In this legislative session, a bill was presented to the state Chamber of Deputies that would change the law so that the electric chair can be used if the lethal injection is not available.
Last year, the bill passed the Senate, but did not get a vote in the House.
In addition, South Carolina is not among the 14 states that provide “protection laws”, protecting the identities of pharmaceutical companies that provide lethal doses. The legislation to offer this protection has failed.
“The department does not have the drugs necessary to conduct a lethal injection and we have been transparent about that,” said prison director Bryan Stirling in a statement to the Post and Courier on February 5 following the state Supreme Court decision. “Until the law is changed, this issue will remain an obstacle for us to comply with the court order.”
Last November, the state’s effort to execute Richard Bernard Moore, who was sentenced to death for killing a convenience store clerk in 1999 in Spartanburg County, was frustrated by employing a legal strategy similar to that used by Sigmon’s legal team.
In Moore’s case, he did not make a choice between the two delivery methods, which made lethal injection standard, according to an Associated Press report. The state Supreme Court ruled that he could not be executed by electric chair.
Sigmon followed a similar path, refusing to make a choice, according to the Supreme Court decision of February 4 in his case.
The court order was a matter of semantics. The judges did not demand the suspension of execution, but instead instructed the prison department that it cannot electrocute someone until lethal injectable drugs are available.
“Although we do not consider it a reason to suspend execution, the petitioner has shown that execution is currently impossible,” wrote the court.
The order indicates that the state “frankly admits” that it will not be able to obtain the drug before the date of execution. In the end, the court ruled that no enforcement notice can be issued until the drugs are available.
In a request to suspend execution in the United States District Court, Sigmon’s lawyers argued that the state “hid” what the methods of execution entail.
Prosecutors argued that the state would not share the origin or nature of any lethal drugs or protocol for administering them, which leaves safeguards in doubt “to prevent a torturous and unconstitutional death by lethal injection”.
The lawyers argued that the state did not provide any information that would ensure the use of the electric chair would not raise the “spectrum of excruciating pain” and the “certainty of cooked brains and bloated bodies” that other jurisdictions have cited to govern the unconstitutional method.
The circumstances surrounding the murders were set out in the United States 4th Circuit Court of Appeal’s denial of its last avenue to overturn its 2002 death sentence and sentence.
In 2001, Sigmon’s girlfriend, Rebecca Barbare, ended their three-year relationship. The two lived together in a trailer in Greenville County, behind the home of their parents, David and Gladys Larke.
After Barbare moved into his parents’ home after the separation, Sigmon became angry and conspired with an acquaintance to wait until his ex-girlfriend left to take his children to school to tie up his parents and “catch her” “when she returned.
Sigmon pulled a baseball bat out from under his trailer, went into the house and after Larke told his wife to get a gun, Sigmon beat his parents to death.
When Barbare returned, Sigmon forced her into a car and took her away with his father’s gun. Barbare got out of the car and Sigmon stopped, got out, chased and shot her.
She survived.
After a 10-day manhunt, Sigmon was captured in Tennessee.
Jeffrey Motts, sentenced to death in 2007 for killing a fellow inmate at the Perry Correctional Institution, was the last inmate to be executed in 2011.
Follow Eric on Twitter at @cericconnor.