The state has never used that method to execute a prisoner. The last time an inmate was killed by a firing squad was in 2010 in Utah.

Brad Sigmon, 67, was sentenced to death in 2002 for fatally beating his ex-girlfriend's parents while trying to kidnap the woman in Greenville County in 2001.

On Friday, he became the first South Carolina inmate to choose the state’s new firing squad over lethal injection or the electric chair. Only three inmates in the U.S. have been executed by firing squad since 1976.