On Friday, March 7, just ahead of the Jewish Sabbath, a South Carolina firing squad will shoot to death my longtime pen pal and friend Brad Sigmon. This will mark the first American firing squad execution to take place in 15 years. Accordingly, it will be the first since I co-founded the 3,800+-member-strong “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” in response to the aptly named “Trump killing spree” of 2020-2021. As the Death Penalty Information Center reports, only four states other than South Carolina allow for the use of the firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah. Three executions by firing squad have been carried out in the US since 1977 — all of which have taken place in Utah — with the last use in the 2010 execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner. Friday will mark the start of South Carolina’s first attempt to perpetrate an intentional fatal shooting of a prisoner. The resurrection of this barbaric execution method to kill Brad merits a public response from a Jewish perspective.
Brad has been on South Carolina’s Death Row for decades. From our first conversation ahead of a previous execution date four years ago, Brad openly admitted to having brutally murdered Gladys Gwendolyn (b. Jan. 1 1942) and William David (b. Feb. 28, 1939) Larke, on April 27, 2001, after an argument with his ex-girlfriend in what he described to me as a devastating crime of passion — one compounded by mental illness and childhood trauma. May the abiding spirits of Gladys and William Larke be loving guides and consummate blessings for all who were privileged to know them in this world. As with every execution, L’chaim members and I will join the ranks of Death Penalty Action to remember the Larke family in prayer during the online vigil that will be held ahead of Brad’s state murder.
Fellow abolitionists will also offer at that time a final prayer for Brad, who has grown exponentially from the person who committed those unimaginable acts decades ago. From the onset of his relationship with me, Brad has demonstrated his impassioned regret over his actions, which haunt him with all of his being and at every waking moment. My experience with Brad conforms with comments from his attorney Gerald “Bo” King, who has observed that Brad “is deeply devout and has spent pretty much every day of his incarceration trying to express his remorse and penitence for these crimes.” Brad and other condemned human beings with whom I have corresponded in South Carolina have time and again conveyed to me how he has become a role model in both his faith in the Divine and his lovingkindness for his peers on what he has come to call “Life Row.” As one minister has noted, Brad could be “an informal chaplain on Death Row because of the ways he pastors and mentors his fellow inmates.”
I cannot begin to put myself in the position of the loved ones of Brad’s murder victims. In a powerful synchronicity that serves to highlight this fact, it so happens that Brad’s victim William David Larke, the father of Brad’s ex-girlfriend, shares the very same birthdate and year as my own father Bob Zoosman: February 28, 1939. This powerful connection compels me to consider that if Brad had murdered my dad, it is quite possible that all bets would be off for my abolitionist sentiment. In that scenario, I could very well find myself desiring — and perhaps even advocating for — the death of my loved one’s killer.
As a hospital chaplain, I have regularly counseled mourners that they should feel permission to experience the full gamut of human emotion while grieving, including rage, and even the desire for vengeance where applicable. Let no one ever judge anyone in such a position. A civilized society has a responsibility to protect and honor all such mourners, while also upholding the most basic human rights upon which this world stands. Fundamental to these, of course, is the right to life itself. For this reason alone, more than 70% of the nations of the world have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
Recently, Brad asked if I might offer him a Jewish blessing ahead of being shot to death. He and I were able to do so by phone just days ahead of his execution. Let there be no doubt: Brad is an Evangelical Christian, and extremely well-supported by his spiritual advisors, as facilitated by a truly inspiring team of activists at South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, led by the Rev. F. Hillary Taylor. As someone who has become my penpal over the years and who holds great respect for Jewish traditions while also being guided by his own faith, Brad had a final wish for me to offer this prayer. And so I did. As with any traditional Jewish prayer for healing, I chanted a blessing for his spiritual wellness using both his name and the name of his mother, Virginia, who the state will transform into another bereaved murder victim family member once Friday’s horror likely transpires.
Brad’s request for a Jewish prayer offered a further reminder to this former prison chaplain of the reality of the interfaith connections among the condemned. It should not be surprising, then, that Jessie Hoffman — the first person who is scheduled to be gassed to death in the state of Louisiana, less than two weeks after Brad on March 18th — is married to a woman who is Jewish. Mrs. Hoffman is a member of L’chaim and like myself and so many other members, knows all-too-well the unconscionable Nazi legacy of any such gassing executions. This includes Arizona’s recent plans to use the gas Zyklon-B — of Auschwitz infamy — in its future gas chamber.
A similar sentiment holds true for firing squads in the modern Jewish collective consciousness. While the use of firing squads indeed predates the Holocaust, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum illustrates in detail how Nazi Germany’s Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units operating under the command of the Schutzstaffel (SS), shot and summarily executed more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of other people during the Second World War in German-occupied Europe. At the notorious Babi Yar massacre alone, about 34,000 Jews were murdered in two days of such firing squad killings near Kiev. Any post-Holocaust use of a firing squad for state-sponsored murder is forever tainted by the cold blood in which these ancestors were targeted. It is a slap in the face to the thousands of Jews who say “Never Again!” to the state-sponsored murder of prisoners.
L’chaim members who descend from the survivors of these events know better than most that capital punishment is indeed not the same as genocide. Members also know better than most that when someone who is in a state’s direct line of fire — like Brad — reaches out for a blessing, it is incumbent for it to be provided. This is among the reasons why L’chaim answered Brad’s prayer call, sending alongside it countless personalized messages of support from members across the world.
Naysayers often remind abolitionists that it was in fact Brad’s own decision for the state to murder him by firing squad, which is indeed true. Brad informed me that he elected this execution method because of the protracted pain and suffering that his fellow South Carolinians had experienced while being put to death by lethal injection, which is of course the other killing mode available in his state’s version of what can perhaps best be described as a veritable Sophie’s Choice 2.0. Members of L’chaim are keenly aware how that choice, too, perpetuates a Nazi legacy. Lest it be forgotten: lethal injection was first implemented in this world by the Nazis as part of their infamous Aktion T4 protocol to kill people deemed “unworthy of life.” That protocol was developed by Dr. Karl Brandt, personal physician of Adolf Hitler, who personally signed off on the initiative.
Whether firing squad, gassing, lethal injection, or otherwise, there is no humane way to execute a human being. It is often physical torture, and always psychological torture, a fact that Brad’s nightmarish experience of an attempted suicide ahead of a previous execution date drove home for me. The indisputable reality that so many state killing methods evoke the Third Reich’s horrors — one of the darkest chapters of human history — punctuates why twenty-first century Judaism along with all of civilized humanity must work toward absolute abolition of the death penalty, without exception.
Twentieth-century Jewish human rights icon Elie Wiesel encapsulated the stand of the members of L’chaim. When asked about his feelings on capital punishment, Wiesel resolutely stated “Death is not the answer.” In a videotaped interview he gave with Amnesty International in the 1990s, Wiesel clearly made no exception to this stance, stating: “With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don’t think it’s human to become an agent of the angel of death.” This is the torch that L’chaim members carry.
In the wake of the Shoah and the unparalleled horrors of the twentieth century, nations of the world increasingly have recognized the inviolability of the human right of life and have abolished the state-sponsored murder of the incarcerated. Modern-day Judaism, directly targeted by that unparalleled conflagration, must reflect this by evolving beyond its ancient reluctance to allow capital punishment, even with prodigious rabbinic safeguards. It must become a Tree of Life for all — one whose branches extend as a model across this world. This includes for the so-called “worst of the worst,” from Nazi perpetrators, to the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, to the Hamas terrorists who carried out the unspeakable October 7th attacks. It is a non-starter that the limbs of that tree also extend to my penpal Brad Sigmon, and to any future state firing squad, gassing or lethal injection victims.
The cycle of violence must end and these Nazi legacies must be put to rest once and for all.
This first appeared on The Jurist.
Source: Counter Punch
