A South Carolina man convicted of murdering three individuals over two decades ago is slated to be executed by firing squad this week, marking the third such execution in the state this year.
Stephen Bryant, aged 44, is scheduled to face the firing squad at 6 p.m. on Friday at the Broad River Correctional Institution, located in Columbia, South Carolina.
After a 13-year hiatus, South Carolina resumed executions in September last year. The pause was largely due to issues maintaining a sufficient supply of lethal injection drugs and concerns about problematic executions using the method.
Since that resumption, four individuals have been executed via lethal injection in the state. Additionally, the electric chair remains a legal method of execution in South Carolina.
For Bryant’s execution, three prison staff members have volunteered to carry out the firing squad procedure from a distance of 15 feet.
Three prison employees have volunteered to carry out Bryant’s execution from 15 feet away.
He has no pending appeals but is allowed to ask the governor for clemency. A South Carolina governor has not given clemency, which wouldn’t come in until minutes before the execution, since the United States resumed the death penalty in 1976.
Bryant chose to die by firing squad over lethal injection and the electric chair last month.
Bryant admitted to fatally shooting Willard “TJ” Tietjen in his home, burning his eyes with cigarettes and painting “catch me if u can” on the wall with Tietjen’s blood.
South Carolina’s electric chair sits in the death chamber at Broad River Correctional Facility. The viewing room to the right is where media, lawyers and family witnesses sit. (Eric Seals/The State/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Candles were lit around Tietjen’s body and the corner of a potholder was dipped in Tietjen’s blood and used to write “victem 4 in 2 weeks. catch me if u can” on a wall, according to officials.
Tietjen’s daughter called him six times, telling investigators on the final call, a strange voice answered and told her they killed Tietjen.
Prosecutors alleged Bryant also shot and killed two other men in the back after offering them rides in October 2004, one prior to Tietjen’s death and one after.
Mikal Mahdi, 41, was executed in April at a prison in Columbia. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
Bryant’s lawyers said he was distressed before the killings, repeatedly asking for help as he struggled with trauma from being sexually abused by four male relatives as a child, according to the report. He allegedly tried to cope through drug use, including meth and bug-spray-laced joints.
Attorneys for Mikal Mahdi, the last man put to death by firing squad earlier year, are suing the state, claiming that the bullets missed his heart and he was likely alive and suffering for up to a minute afterward.
Mahdi, 42, was convicted in the 2004 killings of an off-duty police officer in Calhoun County, South Carolina, and a convenience store clerk in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was sentenced to death for the murder of the officer and life in prison for the clerk’s murder.
