South Carolina executes Stephen Bryant

South Carolina executes killer who left bloody message, marking third firing-squad execution this year

A South Carolina man convicted of killing 3 people over 5 days more than 20 years ago was executed by a firing squad on Friday evening.

Stephen Bryant, 44, was executed for killing a man in his home and writing "catch me if u can" on the wall with the victim's blood. He was pronounced dead at 6:05 p.m. following a firing squad. Three prison employees, all with live ammunition, volunteered to carry out the execution. Bryant is the 3rd man this year to die by South Carolina's newest execution method.

Bryant chose to die by firing squad instead of lethal injection or the electric chair. According to The Independent, his final meal was a seafood stir fry and chocolate cake, and when the time of his execution came he did not give a final statement. He briefly glanced at the 10 witnesses before the hood was placed on his head.

The shots rang out about 55 seconds later. Bryant made no noise. The red bullseye target that marks the location of his heart flew forward off his chest. He had a few shallow breaths and then a final spasm a little over a minute later. A doctor checked him with a stethoscope for before he pronounced Bryant dead.

The state has used a firing squad to put to death three of 5 inmates this year.

Lawyers for Bryant filed a last-minute appeal, arguing the sentencing judge never considered the severe brain damage he suffered due to his mother's drug and alcohol use during pregnancy. The Supreme Court declined in October to review Bryant's death sentence.

Bryant was convicted in the 2004 killing of a man in his home, and investigators said he burned Willard "TJ" Tietjen's eyes with cigarettes after shooting him and painting on the wall with the victim's blood.

Prosecutors said he also shot and killed 2 other men he was giving rides to as they were relieving themselves on the side of the road during a few weeks that terrorized Sumter County in October 2004.

In March, South Carolina carried out the nation's 1st execution by firing squad in 15 years. The state has used a firing squad to put to death three of 5 inmates this year.

Bryant is the 7th person put to death by South Carolina in 14 months after the state had a 13-year pause in executions when it couldn't obtain lethal injection drugs.

Convicted double murderer Brad Sigmon was executed by firing squad in March this year, having opted for the execution method over lethal injection or electric chair and becoming the first person in 15 years to face the method of execution in the US after Ronnie Lee Gardner was put to death in 2010 in Utah.

A witness to Sigmon's execution who had seen 10 previous death row sentences carried out said that he'd found it a 'faster' and 'more violent' method than the other ways, and that nothing he'd seen before prepared him for it.

A month later, fellow death row inmate Mikal Mahdi was also executed by firing squad and his attorneys pointed towards his autopsy report claiming that he had been shot lower down in the body than expected, the bullets missing his heart, and that he had not been pronounced dead until four minutes after he was shot.

The South Carolina Department of Corrections 'strongly refuted' the claims that they had botched the execution, insisting that all three bullets had struck Madhi's heart.

South Carolina turned to the firing squad as it struggled to find alternative methods to execute condemned inmates. By the early 2010s, the state had run out of lethal injection drugs, and no manufacturer would sell more without anonymity, a condition the law didn't permit.

Judges refused to schedule executions if electrocution was the only option. As a result, executions halted for 13 years, and death row cases began to stack up.

No South Carolina governor has offered clemency since the death penalty resumed in the United States in 1976.

Death row executions in the U.S. are on the rise, after creeping upward since the pandemic, when the country's use of the death penalty reached a historic low.

43 executions have been carried out so far in 2025 and 3 were scheduled for this week, but only two took place: one in Florida and Bryant's in South Carolina. An execution was scheduled in Oklahoma on Thursday, but Oklahoma's governor commuted the sentence of the inmate condemned in his state.

At least 14 others are scheduled to be put to death during the remainder of 2025 and next year.

Bryant becomes the 5th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in South Carolina and the 50th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on January 11, 1985.

Bryant becomes the 43rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,650th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Source: CBS News, Staff, Rick Halperin, November 14, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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