“Who would Jesus execute?” — Death penalty protestors plead with governor to spare inmate’s life
COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) — Ahead of Friday’s scheduled execution of convicted murderer Brad Sigmon, protesters at the Statehouse are pleading for his life.
67-year-old Sigmon is set to die by firing squad for the murders of his ex-girlfriends’ parents in 2001 — beating David and Gladys Larke to death with a baseball bat in their Greenville home.
He also kidnapped his ex-girlfriend and shot her once after she jumped out of his speeding car. She survived the incident.
Now with less than 24 hours to live, members of “South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty,” including many local religious leaders, are asking Governor McMaster to provide Sigmon with clemency, and grant him life in prison instead.
“Removing one life to punish them for taking someone else’s does nothing to restore the fabric of humanity, it only increases the damage,” says Rev. Bryan Pigford of Cokesbury United Methodist Church in Charleston.
They say Sigmon endured physical abuse from his father as a child, and his manic behavior was the result of severe undiagnosed mental illness.
The group provided McMaster’s clerk with a petition of over 14,000 signatures — with the belief that taking Sigmon’s life will not provide loved ones with healing or justice — and will only further the pain Sigmon has caused.
“What victims of violence deserve and what murder victim families deserve is they deserve to be seen, they deserve to be heard, and they deserve to have their pain taken seriously, and to know that what happened to them will never happen to them again. And the death penalty unfortunately cannot guarantee any of those things,” says Reverend Hillary Taylor, Executive Director of the SCADP.
Utah resident Randy Gardner says he’s pleading for Sigmon’s life as well.
“If your Governor McMaster wants to see what these pictures look like, I’d be more than willing to show him, it’s the autopsy photos of my brother , and it’s a gory sight,” says Gardner.
“Why do we kill someone who kills someone to show that killing is wrong? I don’t get it. My daughter, when she was 6 years old, she said, dad why do we do it? And that’s how simple it is for me,” he says.
Taylor says she’s been Sigmon’s spiritual advisor for the past four and a half years.
“What Brad has taught me, is that it’s not necessarily whether or not somebody deserves death, it’s whether or not we deserve to kill anybody. Not even the highest most powerful politicians in our land,” says Taylor, wearing a button that asks “Who would Jesus execute?”
If executed, Sigmon will become the 4th man to be executed in SC within a six month period, following Freddie Owens, Richard Moore, and Marion Bowman, Jr.
Governor McMaster is the only person who can provide Sigmon with clemency up until his execution at six p.m. on Friday night.
