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00:00The capital punishment sentence of Brad Keith Sigmund was carried out tonight pursuant to
00:11the order of the South Carolina Supreme Court and in accordance with state law.
00:16The execution was performed at 6.05.50 by a three-person firing squad and began.
00:24He was pronounced dead by a physician at 6.08 p.m.
00:29When the curtain opened, Brad Sigmund was strapped into the chair.
00:33Unlike other death executions I've seen, he was in a black jumpsuit, had black Crocs-like
00:39shoes on.
00:40He was completely strapped in.
00:41It looked like there was a harness over him.
00:44There was a strap over his head.
00:46His ankles were shackled.
00:49He had a covering over his mouth that was from about here down.
00:54When the curtain opened, he looked towards his attorney, who was on the front row of
00:57the witness.
00:59They had an exchange.
01:00I couldn't tell because his mouth was covered, what they were mouthing back and forth to
01:04each other.
01:05But it looked like he was just saying he was okay to his attorney, as Sigmund did.
01:09At that point, the attorney came out and read the final statement.
01:14When the final statement was read, let me back up one step.
01:17He had a target over his heart when the curtain opened.
01:20It was already there.
01:21It was a little rectangle, white paper, or I'm assuming it was paper, could have been
01:26cloth.
01:27It had a bullseye on it.
01:28It had one outer ring and one inner ring on it.
01:31It was red.
01:32The bullseye was red.
01:33So he came out, read his final statement.
01:36At that point, when that was finished, a prison employee got a hood, put the hood over Sigmund's
01:44head.
01:45Then that prison employee walked from the chair, the 15 feet over to where there's a
01:50brick wall.
01:51At that point, there's a black shade, one of those shades that you pull down and it
01:55rolls up.
01:56So there's a black shade there.
01:58The prison employee lifted up the shade, and then from that point, it was a little less
02:04than two minutes of nothing at that moment.
02:07I mean, you could see Brad Sigmund took several pretty deep breaths, and then suddenly the
02:14shots rang out at, I believe Christy said it was 6.05 and 50 seconds.
02:20At that point, you did see a small red stain on Sigmund's chest.
02:27It was irregularly shaped, but oval, if that makes sense.
02:29I mean, it wasn't like a circle, it was an oval shape.
02:33I saw, it looked like he may have taken a couple of, his chest rose and fell about two
02:38times immediately after the shots.
02:41You could see a tiny piece of tissue or something that was coming out of that.
02:45At that point, also his arm tensed up when he got shot.
02:48There's kind of this brief moment of tensing.
02:51After that, the doctor was in there fairly quickly.
02:55Less than a minute after the shots came, couldn't see exactly what the doctor did because
03:00my viewpoint was blocked from his back, but he did an examination for about 90 seconds,
03:07and then he walked back towards the other side of the room, walked from left to right
03:12as I'm viewing, and then that's when the prison employee announced 6.08 is the time of death.
03:20At 6.01, the curtain was pulled back, exposing the room to us.
03:27Brad Sigmund was already strapped into the chair.
03:31He had, the chair did not have arms, so his arms were down to his side and clipped in
03:38with restraints.
03:39His feet were restrained.
03:41He had a strap across his forehead, and he also had something that appeared a little
03:46like a sling that covered his mouth, but he could move his head just a little bit,
03:53so he moved his head to the extent that he could toward the witness room, appeared to
03:59be exchanging some words with Bo King, his attorney, kind of took in the whole witness
04:04room to the extent that he could.
04:07I want to comment on the expression that he had.
04:10Again, you couldn't see his whole face, but I did not pick up on anything in his expression
04:17that would have indicated fear.
04:23At 6.03, they put the hood on, and at 6.04, they lifted the shade on the, what I would
04:31describe as covies that the executioners were going to shoot through.
04:36We could not see the guns.
04:40There was also no countdown or anything like that to tell us when the shots would be fired.
04:48The shots were fired at 6.05.
04:51I perceived that they were all fired at once, that it was just one sound.
04:59His arms flexed.
05:03There was something in his midsection that moved.
05:06I'm not necessarily going to call them breaths.
05:08I don't really know, but there was some movement that went on there for two or three seconds.
05:13It was very fast.
05:15I did see a splash of blood when the bullets entered his body.
05:22It was not a huge amount, but there was a splash that you could see kind of protrude
05:27from the wound, and the target was, you couldn't really see what happened to the target.
05:34It just wasn't there anymore.
05:36This is much, one of the differences I tell people is this is much quicker.
05:42Lethal injections in South Carolina from start to finish take about 20 minutes these days.
05:47When I look back, the electrocution took, they give one big jolt of electricity for
05:52several seconds, but then there's another jolt for a minute or two.
05:56So there's a longer period of what happens.
06:00I mean, it was instantaneous, and the time from the shots being fired to the time death
06:07was declared was a little over two minutes, I think, if I remember correctly.