Unless either the governor of South Carolina or the Supreme Court intervenes, Brad Sigmon will be killed at 6pm on Friday.
ADVERTISEMENT
A South Carolina inmate is scheduled to become the first person in 15 years to be killed by firing squad in the US.
The convicted murderer Brad Sigmon's execution will happen at 6 pm local time on Friday evening (12 pm CET), unless either the governor of South Carolina or the Supreme Court decides to give him a last-minute reprieve.
If the execution goes ahead, Sigmon will become only the fourth person to have died by firing squad in the country since the death penalty was reinstated there in 1976.
The last inmate to be killed this way was Ronnie Gardner in Utah in 2010.
Sigmon, who admitted to killing his ex-girlfriend's parents, said he preferred this method to the other options offered by the state.
He did not wish to die by electrocution or lethal injection, his lawyers said.
On Thursday, Sigmon asked the US Supreme Court to delay his execution, suggesting that the state of South Carolina does not release enough information about its lethal injection method.
Meanwhile, his lawyers have asked Republican Governor Henry McMaster to commute his death sentence to life in prison, arguing that he is a model prisoner trusted by the jail's guards.
Under the South Carolina state procedure, Sigmon will be strapped to a chair, before having a hood placed over his head.
Three volunteers armed with rifles will then simultaneously fire bullets designed to shatter on impact with his chest.
Sigmon's lawyer, his victims' family members and three members of the media are due to watch his execution behind a pane of bullet-resistant glass.
He has had execution dates set on three previous occasions. Each time, judges granted him a delay because he was unable to choose death by lethal injection, as the state did not have the drugs needed to carry it out.
The convict beat his ex-girlfriend's parents to death in 2001 with a baseball bat because he was angry that they had him evicted from a trailer they owned.
Sigmon then kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, but she escaped from his car. He shot at her as she ran, but missed, prosecutors said.
“My intention was to kill her and then myself," Sigmon said in a confession typed out by a detective after his arrest. “That was my intention all along. If I couldn’t have her, I wasn’t going to let anybody else have her. And I knew it got to the point where I couldn’t have her."
His likely execution comes as the Idaho Senate passed a bill this week that could make death by firing squad the state's primary method. It will take effect next year if it is signed by Governor Brad Little.