When Was the Last Firing Squad Execution? The 2025 Case That Ended a 15-Year Gap and the Science of Modern Protocol

The last firing squad execution in the United States was carried out on March 7, 2025, when Brad Sigmon was executed at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina. It was the first firing squad execution in the country since Ronnie Lee Gardner was shot in Utah in June 2010. South Carolina thus became the only state to carry out a firing squad execution in the 2020s, ending a nearly 15-year national pause.

How a Modern Firing Squad Actually Works

A firing squad execution is not a single marksman but a five-officer volley governed by written protocol, and the gap between the command to fire and death is measured in seconds to minutes. South Carolina's publicly released protocol illustrates the modern mechanics. The condemned person is restrained in a chair with a hood and a aim point over the heart. Five volunteer officers stand roughly 15 feet away behind a wall with a firing port, each holding a .308-caliber rifle. One rifle fires a dummy round so no shooter can be certain he delivered the lethal shot.

The physiological target is the heart, not the head. A .308 bullet striking the cardiac mass produces immediate catastrophic damage to the ventricles and atria, and the resulting loss of blood pressure to the brain causes rapid unconsciousness. Death is then declared by a physician after an examination, typically within minutes. This design reflects a deliberate trade-off: heart shots are slower than head shots but leave the face intact for viewing, which matters in states where families may witness.

The dummy-round system is the detail most popular accounts miss. It is a psychological safeguard for the shooters, not a medical one, and it does not change the number of live bullets that enter the body. In Sigmon's case, the physician pronounced death at 6:08 p.m., about three minutes after the volley. A plain-language way to say it: the squad aims at the pump, not the face, and the clock runs from the volley, not the order.

Quantified Context: Executions, States, and the Modern Docket

Firing squad executions are a vanishingly small fraction of American executions, and the numbers show how far the method has receded. In the 20th century, Utah carried out most of the 40-plus firing squad executions recorded in the United States. The modern era, roughly 1976 onward, has seen a handful: Gary Gilmore in 1977, John Albert Taylor in 1996, and Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010, all in Utah, followed by Sigmon in 2025 in South Carolina.

The reason states retain the method is a drug problem, not a firearms preference. Lethal injection depends on a supply chain of controlled substances that manufacturers and distributors increasingly refuse to provide for executions. Every state that retains a firing squad alternative did so after facing an execution-drug shortage or a court challenge to its injection protocol. South Carolina passed its firing squad law in 2021 and amended its protocol in 2024 after a trial over the state's previous three-drug method. The state has executed by lethal injection since, and Sigmon chose the firing squad rather than the electric chair offered as an alternative.

The national annual total of executions has fallen sharply from a peak above 90 in 1999 to roughly two dozen per year in the 2020s. That decline, combined with the injection-drug crunch, is why the firing squad question resurfaces every few years. As of 2025, five states authorize a firing squad by statute: South Carolina, Utah, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Idaho.

The Timeline of the Modern Firing Squad Era

The table compresses nearly 50 years into six rows, but the arc is clear: Utah built the modern template, and South Carolina imported it under drug-supply pressure.

Edge Cases: Why Firing Squads Are Not Simple or Fast

The firing squad has an image of grim reliability, but legal and logistical edge cases make it one of the most contested methods in the death penalty system. The first is constitutional: courts have heard challenges arguing the method is cruel and unusual, and South Carolina's 2024 revisions to its protocol were made in the shadow of litigation over whether the injection method was itself unconstitutional. Whether a firing squad violates the Eighth Amendment remains unsettled federal law, and the Supreme Court has declined to take up the question.

The second edge case is deterrence and spectacle. In 2011, Utah's legislature considered the firing squad as an alternative precisely because the method is fast and public-facing, and one lawmaker argued it could serve as a deterrent. That argument cuts both ways in litigation, because the same visible violence is what challengers cite as evidence of cruelty.

The third is the dummy-round controversy. In Sigmon's case and in prior Utah executions, critics argued the dummy round is a psychological ritual rather than a mechanism, and that its inclusion shows the state is managing shooter psychology rather than addressing the condemned person's experience. Retained-but-safe protocols can also exist without the firing squad at all, which is the argument for abolishing the method instead of refining it.

The professional caveat: a .308 round to the chest can fail to produce immediate death if it misses the heart and strikes the lungs or abdomen. That is why protocol, aiming point, and shooter count matter more than the caliber.

Misconceptions About the Firing Squad

Four persistent misconceptions deserve correction. First, the firing squad is not instant. Sigmon's death was pronounced about three minutes after the command, and Utah's Gardner took longer. Second, the squad does not shoot simultaneously in the sense of perfect alignment; the dummy round exists to manage shooter doubt, not to spread the bullets in time. Third, the method is not "never used" since the 20th century merely because it is rarely used; South Carolina's statute lists it and the state has now used it. Fourth, the firing squad is not a lower-tech relic kept for tradition. It is a modern fallback designed around the supply of injection drugs.

Red flag: the dummy round does not reduce the number of live bullets; it only obscures who fired which rifle. Red flag: heart shots can be survivable in principle, which is why a robust aiming point and a backup physician plan are critical. Red flag: "instant death" language in a protocol is a description of intent, not a measured outcome. Red flag: a state statute authorizing a method does not mean the state uses it; only executed cases count. Red flag: warmth or twitching after a volley is not proof that the person was conscious; blood pressure collapse produces involuntary movement.

Practical Actions: What to Do With This Information

This is a question most people ask out of curiosity, a research assignment, or concern about how a state will handle an execution. The practical actions differ by reader. If you are checking a claim on social media, the test is simple: does the post name an executed person, a state, and a date in the modern era? Without all three, the claim is likely about a statute, not an execution.

If you are writing or teaching about the death penalty, separate three categories that are routinely conflated: states that authorize a firing squad, states that have carried out one, and states that have never used the method. Only the second category should be cited when you answer the question of when the last firing squad execution happened. If you are tracking legal developments, watch the execution protocol documents rather than news headlines, because a protocol change in 2024 predicted the March 2025 execution one year later.

If you are a journalist, the timeline table above is the minimum standard for accuracy. If you are a reader who simply wants to be right at trivia, the answer is March 7, 2025, Brad Sigmon, South Carolina. If you are a student evaluating the method's ethics, read the actual protocol before you read the editorials; the dummy round, aiming point, and physician role are where the argument actually lives. The honest limit of this article: the number of firing squad executions ever carried out is small, records are inconsistent across states, and any count should be treated as a floor rather than a total.

The general educational framing matters here. This article describes mechanisms and history, not a legal opinion on capital punishment, and it does not predict whether courts will uphold or strike down the method. Readers facing questions about an actual case, a family member under a sentence of death, or an active court proceeding should consult a licensed attorney in the relevant jurisdiction rather than rely on a general explainer. For questions about execution methods and constitutional challenges, qualified local legal professionals are the appropriate source, and the article stops short of giving case-specific advice by design.