Firing squads in North Carolina? Lawmakers to consider new options for death penalty

A legislative committee on Tuesday is scheduled to debate a bill that would allow people sentenced to death in North Carolina to choose between three options for their execution: lethal injection, electrocution, or firing squad.

Capital punishment could soon look a lot different in North Carolina.

A House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday plans to discuss House Bill 270, which would allow criminals sentenced to death in North Carolina to choose lethal injection, electrocution, or firing squad for their execution.

Lethal injection has been North Carolina’s primary method for executions since 1998, when the state pivoted away from lethal gas. The state hasn’t carried out a death penalty sentence since 2006, when legal challenges put executions on hold.

A federal judge ruled that a doctor must monitor the condemned for signs of pain, to make sure no unconstitutional pain occurs. However, the state’s medical board at the time threatened to punish any doctor who takes part in an execution because it conflicts with the Hippocratic oath to “do no harm,” the Associated Press reported.

House Bill 270, sponsored by nine House Republicans, would require inmates to select their preferred method of execution in writing 14 days before it’s scheduled to take place. If the inmate makes no choice, the penalty would be carried out by electrocution.

The proposal comes less than two months after South Carolina executed a man by firing squad, marking the first time it had been done in the U.S. in 15 years, according to the AP. The deceased South Carolina man, Brad Sigmon, was sentenced to death after he was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend's parents with a baseball bat in 2001.

Sigmon was given a choice for his execution, the AP reported. His lawyers said he chose the firing squad because the electric chair would “cook him alive,” and he feared that a lethal injection would send a rush of fluid and blood into his lungs and drown him, according to the AP.

Killing someone by lethal injection is considered to be a cruel punishment by some. More than 7% of lethal injection executions were botched between 1890 and 2010, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that researches the death penalty but doesn’t take a position on the practice.

Earlier this month, South Carolina executed another man by firing squad: Mikal Mahdi, 42, who was convicted of killing an off-duty police officer in 2004, the AP reported.

Source: wral.com, Staff, April 29, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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