Stephen Bryant, 44, faces execution by firing squad Friday evening in South Carolina, poised to become the third person this year to meet this fate within the state’s borders. The scheduled time is 6 p.m. at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, a stark culmination of crimes committed over two decades ago.
South Carolina resumed executions in September of last year, a decision driven by mounting difficulties in securing lethal injection drugs and growing anxieties surrounding the potential for botched procedures. Since then, four men have been executed by lethal injection, with the electric chair remaining a legal, though rarely used, alternative.
Bryant himself chose the firing squad over the other available methods last month. Three correctional officers have volunteered for the grim task, prepared to carry out the execution from a distance of fifteen feet.
The case centers around the brutal 2004 murder of Willard “TJ” Tietjen. Bryant confessed to shooting Tietjen, then subjected him to unspeakable cruelty – burning his eyes with cigarettes and scrawling a chilling message in the victim’s own blood: “catch me if u can.”
Investigators discovered a scene meticulously arranged with macabre detail. Candles flickered around Tietjen’s body, and a corner of a potholder was used to write another disturbing message on the wall: “victem 4 in 2 weeks. catch me if u can.” Tietjen’s daughter, desperately trying to reach her father, received a final, horrifying answer to her sixth call – a stranger’s voice confirming her worst fears.
Prosecutors linked Bryant to two additional murders, both involving men he’d offered rides to in October 2004. These shootings, occurring before and after Tietjen’s death, painted a picture of calculated violence and a chilling disregard for human life.
Defense attorneys presented a harrowing portrait of Bryant’s troubled past, detailing years of trauma stemming from sexual abuse at the hands of four male relatives. He reportedly sought escape through drug use, a desperate attempt to numb the pain with substances like methamphetamine and even joints laced with bug spray.
The firing squad method itself is under scrutiny. Attorneys representing Mikal Mahdi, the most recent individual executed by this method, are currently suing the state. They allege that Mahdi may have remained conscious and suffered for up to a minute after the volley of bullets, claiming the shots did not immediately reach his heart.
Mahdi’s case involved the 2004 killings of an off-duty police officer in South Carolina and a convenience store clerk in North Carolina. He received a death sentence for the officer’s murder and a life sentence for the clerk’s.
As Bryant awaits his fate, he retains the right to appeal for clemency from the governor, a request that hasn’t been granted in South Carolina since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. The hours leading up to 6 p.m. Friday will be a tense and somber reckoning with a dark chapter in the state’s history.
