In American history, the firing squad has served as punishment for colonial-era mutinies, a means of preventing desertion among soldiers during the Civil War, and a form of frontier justice in the Old West. In modern times, some view it as a more humane alternative to lethal injection. The firing squad has a long and complex history in the United States.
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03-10, 2025South Carolina is scheduled to execute an inmate by firing squad this Friday, marking the first use of this method in the U.S. in 15 years. Brad Sigmon, convicted of murdering his former girlfriend's parents in 2001, chose the firing squad over the other two execution methods offered by South Carolina: the electric chair and lethal injection. The South Carolina Supreme Court rejected what may have been his final appeal.
Since 1608, at least 144 civilian prisoners in the U.S. have been executed by firing squad, almost all of them in Utah. Only three have occurred since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1977. The first of these was the case of Gary Gilmore, which generated a media frenzy due to his waiving of appeals and voluntary acceptance of execution. When asked for his last words, Gilmore replied, "Let's do it."
Currently, five states—Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah—authorize the use of firing squads under specific circumstances. What follows is a historical overview of this method of capital punishment.
The earliest recorded execution by firing squad took place in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608. Captain George Kendall was suspected of mutiny—and possibly conspiring with Spain. Centuries later, in 1996, archaeologists discovered a body riddled with bullet holes within the fort's walls, which many suspect to be Kendall's.
During the American Revolutionary War, firing squads were sometimes used for the public execution of deserters. According to the Journal of the American Revolution, in 1776, then-General George Washington pardoned a Connecticut soldier, Ebenezer Leffingwell, who had been sentenced to death for arguing with a superior officer. Leffingwell was bound, blindfolded, and forced to kneel before a crowd when a chaplain involved in the trial announced his pardon.
Mark Smith, a history professor at the University of South Carolina, stated that both sides used firing squads during the Civil War—though not frequently—to create "a public spectacle, a spectacle of terror" to discipline soldiers. "A person would sometimes sit on their own coffin, or be blindfolded, and be shot by six or seven people, one of whom would have a blank," the professor said. "These gatherings were designed to shock, and they did." Christopher Q. Cutler, author of a Cleveland State University Law Review article, stated that at least 185 people were executed by firing squad during the Civil War.
Firing squads were primarily used only in Utah, where legislators in 1851 designated three possible punishments for murder: execution by firing squad, hanging, or beheading. The first firing squad execution was conducted inside a courthouse fence, disappointing the crowd waiting outside to watch. Since 1900, only one other state has executed someone by firing squad: Nevada, which in 1913 built a device that fired three rifles by pulling a rope, as it was difficult to find volunteers to serve on the firing squad.
An 1877 Utah sentencing led to the first U.S. Supreme Court case challenging a specific method of execution. Wallace Wilkerson, who shot and killed a man during a heated game of cribbage, challenged the authorities' plan to execute him by firing squad. The court rejected his appeal, arguing that unlike some past methods of execution—such as drawing and quartering—execution by firing squad did not entail the kind of "terror, pain, and disgrace" that violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
As it turned out, Cutler notes, Wilkerson's execution was botched: he was reportedly drunk, smoking a cigar, and moved slightly before the executioners fired. He was severely wounded, fell to the ground, and said, "Oh my God! They missed me." He struggled in agony for 15 minutes before dying. Other notable firing squad executions in Utah include the 1915 death of labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill, who maintained until the end that he did not murder a grocer and his son.
Deborah Denno, a criminologist at Fordham Law School, stated that one reason why firing squads have not been widely adopted in the U.S. is that they are perceived as barbaric. The gory reality of these executions, along with botched hangings and electrocutions that sometimes resulted in struggling and suffering, prompted states to begin switching to lethal injection in the early 1980s, a procedure that was at least initially considered more humane.
But according to the Death Penalty Information Center, lethal injection has since become the most frequently botched method of execution. States have struggled to obtain the necessary drugs, and some have revisited the firing squad—an old but generally reliable method. Idaho lawmakers passed a bill on Wednesday making the firing squad the state's primary method of execution.
Two inmates on Utah's death row have currently requested execution by firing squad. Denno urged policymakers to reconsider the firing squad in a 2016 law review article. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has expressed similar views, writing in a 2017 dissent that "besides being nearly instant, death by shooting may also be comparatively painless."
“Lethal injections have only gotten worse over the last few decades,” Denno told the Associated Press. “The firing squad is really a relatively decent way to execute someone.” She said that in the history of executions in the U.S., there have only been two botched firing squad executions: Wilkerson's case and the 1951 Utah execution of Eliseo Mares. It is unclear what happened in Mares' case, but there were reports decades later that the executioners disliked him and intentionally aimed away from his heart to prolong his suffering.
Denno stated that with increased oversight and the hiring of professional marksmen, these problems would not be repeated today. Sigmon, 67, chose to be executed by firing squad because the alternatives seemed worse, his lawyer, Gerald "Bo" King, wrote in a statement.
Some aspects of his execution are modern—for example, the bullets are more lethal, and the guns are now more accurate. But much of it would be familiar to Utahns more than a century ago: a hooded prisoner, a target over his heart, strapped to a chair in the execution chamber, allowed to deliver final words. Nearby, volunteer officers await the order to fire.
