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A South Carolina man who killed three people more than 20 years ago is expected to become the third person in the state to be executed by firing squad this year.
Stephen Bryant, 44, is expected to die at 6 p.m. Friday at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina.
South Carolina resumed executions in September of last year after a 13-year hiatus, partly linked to the state’s difficulties maintaining a sufficient supply of lethal injection drugs and concerns about botched lethal injection executions.
Four men have been killed by lethal injection in the state since September 2024. The electric chair is also legal there.
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Stephen Bryant, 44, is expected to die at 6 p.m. Friday at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP, File; AP)
Three prison employees volunteered to carry out Bryant’s execution from 15 feet away.
He has no appeals pending but is authorized to seek clemency from the governor. A South Carolina governor has not granted a pardon, which would have been granted only minutes before the execution, since the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Bryant chose to die by fatal injection and the electric chair last month.
Death row inmate Stephen Bryant chooses execution by firing squad after admitting to gruesome murder
Bryant admitted to shooting Willard “TJ” Tietjen in his home, burning his eyes with cigarettes, and painting “catch me if you can” on the wall with Tietjen’s blood.
South Carolina’s electric chair is located in the death chamber at Broad River Correctional Center. The observation room on the right is where the 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 “victim 4 in 2 weeks. catch me if you can” on a wall, according to officials.
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Tietjen’s daughter called him six times, telling investigators that during the last call, a strange voice answered and told her they had killed Tietjen.
Prosecutors said Bryant also shot and killed two other men in the back after offering them a ride in October 2004, one before Tietjen’s death and the other afterward.
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Mikal Mahdi, 41, is scheduled to be executed on April 11 at 6 p.m. in a Colombian prison. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
Bryant’s lawyers said he was distraught before the killings, repeatedly asking for help as he suffered the trauma of being sexually abused by four men in his family when he was a child, according to the report. He allegedly tried to cope by using drugs, including methamphetamine and joints containing bug spray.
Lawyers for Mikal Mahdi, the last man executed by firing squad earlier last year, are suing the state, saying the bullets did not hit his heart and that he was likely alive and in pain for up to a minute afterward.
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Mahdi, 42, was convicted of the 2004 murders of an off-duty police officer in Calhoun County, South Carolina, and a convenience store employee in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was sentenced to death for the murder of the police officer and to life in prison for the murder of the clerk.
Sarah Rumpf-Whitten and Alexandra Koch of Fox News and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
