A man on death row in South Carolina is facing execution next month for a murder committed over 20 years ago. The crime involved not only the killing of a man but also the gruesome act of burning the victim’s eyes with cigarettes and taunting law enforcement by writing “catch me if u can” on a wall using the victim’s blood.
Stephen Bryant, now 44, has been scheduled for execution on November 14. This comes after the state Supreme Court issued a death warrant on Friday, dismissing a plea from Bryant’s attorneys to delay the execution due to their affiliation with the federal court system, which is currently affected by a government shutdown.
Though Bryant is being executed for one murder, prosecutors have indicated that he also killed two other men in October 2004. These men were shot while urinating on the roadside in Sumter County after Bryant offered them a ride.
Bryant has until October 31 to decide whether his execution will be carried out by lethal injection, firing squad, or electric chair. Since the state of South Carolina resumed executions last year after a 13-year hiatus caused by difficulties in procuring lethal injection drugs, four inmates have chosen lethal injection while two have opted for the firing squad.
Stephen Bryant, 44, is set to be executed on November 14 following the issuance of a death warrant by the state Supreme Court. (AP)
Bryant admitted to the murder of Willard “TJ” Tietjen, which occurred after Bryant approached Tietjen’s rural Sumter County home claiming he had car trouble.
After Tietjen was shot several times, candles were lit around his body.
The corner of a potholder was dipped in Tietjen’s blood and “victem 4 in 2 weeks. catch me if u can” was written on a wall, according to officials.
Tietjen’s daughter, Kimberly Dees, called him several times and grew worried when he did not answer. She testified that a strange voice answered on her sixth call to her father.
She demanded that the person at the other end of the line allow her to speak to her father.
“And he said, ‘You can’t, I killed him.’ And I said, ‘This isn’t funny, who are you?’ He said, ‘I’m the prowler. And I said, ‘Excuse me, who are you?’ He said, ‘I’m the prowler,’” Dees told a judge who determined Bryant’s sentence.
Prosecutors said Bryant also killed two other men, one before Tietjen’s murder and one after. He gave the two men rides and shot them in the back when they exited the vehicle to urinate on the side of rural roads.
Stephen Bryant will have until Oct. 31 to choose if he wants to die by lethal injection, firing squad or the electric chair. (AP)
Bryant’s lawyers said he had been sexually abused by four male relatives when he was a child, which troubled him in the months before the killing. His lawyers said he begged a probation agent and his aunt to get him help because he could not stop thinking about the abuse.
“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,” his aunt, Terry Caulder, testified.
Bryant resorted to using meth and smoking joints he sprayed with bug killer to help himself through the pain, his attorneys said.
The six inmates put to death in South Carolina since the state restarted executions in September of last year had argued ahead of their deaths that the state’s methods amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
Attorneys for the inmates say the three volunteers with rifles in the second firing squad execution nearly missed Mikal Mahdi’s heart. They said Mahdi was in agonizing pain for three or four times longer than experts say he would have been if the bullets had hit his heart directly.
The lethal injection procedures have also been criticized by death row inmates. The state appears to now use two doses of the sedative pentobarbital, with the attorneys saying the inmates drown in a rush of fluid into their lungs but are paralyzed and cannot react.
Stephen Bryant confessed to killing Willard “TJ” Tietjen after stopping by his home in rural Sumter County and saying he had car trouble. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
Once one of the busiest states for executions, South Carolina had a 13-year pause in executions before resuming in September 2024 due to trouble obtaining lethal injection drugs after the supply expired because of pharmaceutical companies’ concerns that they would have to disclose that they had sold the drugs to state officials.
But the state legislature later passed a shield law allowing officials to keep lethal injection drug suppliers private. The firing squad was also added as an execution method.
Bryant will become the 50th person put to death in South Carolina since the state restarted the death penalty in 1985 and the seventh executed since the state resumed executions a year ago.
Across the U.S., a total of 39 men have been executed so far this year. At least five other executions are scheduled in the U.S. for the remainder of the year.
