A notorious South Carolina criminal is on the brink of execution this Friday following the dismissal of his final appeal to evade the death penalty.
Stephen Bryant, aged 44, faces execution more than two decades after he brutally ended the lives of three individuals in a horrific crime spree.
His rampage, which lasted eight days, struck fear into the hearts of Sumter County residents as he mocked law enforcement by using his victim’s blood to leave a taunting message.
In a last-minute plea to the South Carolina Supreme Court, Bryant argued that his violent actions were a result of brain damage from his mother’s substance abuse during her pregnancy with him.
However, the court decided late Monday that even if it were proven Bryant had Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, it would not alter the decision to execute him.
Due to difficulties in procuring lethal injection drugs, Bryant was given the option to choose his manner of execution, selecting between a firing squad or the electric chair.
Bryant chose the firing squad, which means when he faces execution on November 14, three volunteers will fire shots at him from 15 feet away.
The triple murderer will become the third man executed by firing squad in South Carolina this year, despite reports that killer Mikal Mahdi, 42, suffered excruciating pain when the shooters missed his heart as he was put to death in May.
South Carolina mass killer Steven Bryant, 44, is set to be executed on Friday after his last-ditch attempt to avoid the death penalty was rejected
Bryant has languished on death row since 2008, when he pleaded guilty to shooting four men, three fatally, in an eight-day crime spree in 2004.
Although Bryant admitted to killing three men, his death sentence was the result of just one carried out during the spree, the murder of Willard ‘TJ’ Tietjen, 62, who Bryant ambushed and killed in his remote home in Sumter County.
Bryant targeted Tietjen at random, approaching his secluded home and claiming to have had car trouble before shooting him and leaving a sickening crime scene for investigators.
The then 23-year-old killer, remained in Tietjen’s property for some time, ransacking his home, smoking cigarettes, using his computer, and then writing ‘victim number four in two weeks, catch me if you can’ in his blood.
Bryant also answered a call from Tietjen’s wife and daughter while he was in the home, identifying himself as the ‘prowler’ and telling them that Tietjen was dead.
The two other men Bryant killed, Cliff Gainey and Christopher Burgess, were picked up by him and offered rides before he shot them by the side of the road when they went to urinate.
He also shot victim Clinton Brown in the same manner as Gainey and Burgess, but he survived the attack.
According to an archival WISTV article from 2004, Bryant was arrested at his girlfriend’s home after he was identified as the triggerman in the series of shootings in rural South Carolina.
Bryant was 23-years-old when he shot four men, three fatally, in an eight-day crime spree in 2004, which included writing ‘victim number four in two weeks, catch me if you can’ in his final victim’s blood
With his appeal rejected by the Supreme Court, Byrant is set to be the seventh inmate put to death in South Carolina since the state restarted executions September last year
A prisoner is killed by a firing squad while they’re strapped to a metal chair 15 feet away
Sumter County Sheriff Tommy Sims said at the time that Bryant left the taunting message inside Tietjen’s home telling deputies to ‘catch me if you can’.
‘And I’m happy to say that law enforcement has responded to that challenge and we have caught him,’ Sims announced at a press conference.
The sheriff said that Bryant had been released from prison on burglary charges not long before his crime spree, and that he carried out a series of robberies and other attacks while on the loose.
Bryant’s lawyers argued in court that he should be spared the death penalty because he had endured a turbulent childhood, beginning with his mother drinking heavily while pregnant with him.
He had then been sexually abused by four male relatives as a child, and his attorneys said he had been troubled by the abuse in the months before the murders.
Bryant had reportedly begged for help from a probation officer and his aunt, and he had tried to overcome his mental health issues by abusing meth and smoking joints sprayed with bug killer.
Bryant, seen in a mugshot from 2021, has chosen to be put to death by firing squad
His aunt testified at his trial: ‘He was very upset. He looked like he was being tortured. It’s like his soul was just laid wide open.
‘In his eyes you could see he was hurting and suffering and he was living the abuse over again as it was coming out.’
With his appeal rejected by the Supreme Court, Byrant is set to be the seventh inmate put to death in South Carolina since the state restarted executions September last year.
