COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina's Supreme Court has issued an execution notice for a death row inmate, a move which could set in motion the first execution by the state in over a decade.
The South Carolina Supreme Court issued the order Thursday for 63-year-old Brad Keith Sigmon. The South Carolina Attorney General's Office confirmed to News19 executions are scheduled for the fourth Friday after the notice, which would mean his execution date is June 18.
Sigmon killed his girlfriend's parents in Greenville with a baseball bat in 2001. He's been on death row since 2002.
The death penalty is legal in South Carolina but no one on death row has been executed since 2011. That was because of an inability by the state to get the drugs necessary to execute inmates by lethal injection.
But the South Carolina General Assembly passed a new law earlier this year that aimed to bypass that problem by offering inmates the option of death by either the electric chair or firing squad. Gov. Henry McMaster signed the measure into law, saying it's necessary to give families justice.
Death penalty opponents say both methods of killing are inhumane.
The South Carolina Department of Corrections said after the bill's passing that it is still working on creating protocols for a firing squad, so that option is not available right now for executions, meaning the only option for Sigmon would be the electric chair.
Sigmon is one of three of the state's three dozen death row inmates who have exhausted all appeals. However, he and another inmate, Freddie Owens, are suing over the new law. The lawsuit states both inmates were sentenced when state law allowed them to choose between the electric chair or lethal injection. The suit argues the two should be able to keep that choice.
It's not yet clear when that suit will be heard in court.
The corrections department's website says 284 executions have been carried out by the state since 1912.
