COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina firing squad has executed a man Friday, the third person to die by that method in the state this year.
Three prison employees, all with live ammunition, volunteered to carry out the execution of Stephen Bryant, 44, who was pronounced dead at 6:05 p.m. Bryant killed three people in five days in a rural area of the state in 2004.
Bryant chose to die by firing squad instead of lethal injection or the electric chair. He made no final statement and briefly glanced toward 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 a minute before he pronounced Bryant dead.
A media witness said after the execution that a pool of wetness emerged on Bryant’s chest where he was shot. Three family members of victims who served as witnesses held hands during the execution.
Bryant is the seventh 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.
Republican Gov. Henry McMaster denied clemency for Bryant, according to his office. No South Carolina governor has offered clemency since the death penalty resumed in the U.S. in 1976.
Final meal and memory
For his final meal, Bryant had spicy mixed seafood stir-fry, fried fish over rice, egg rolls, stuffed shrimp, two candy bars and German chocolate cake.
Bo King, a lawyer who works on death penalty cases in South Carolina, said Bryant had a genetic disorder, was a victim of sexual and physical abuse by relatives, and his mother’s binge drinking “permanently damaged his body and brain.”
“Mr. Bryant’s impairments left him unable to endure the tormenting memories of his childhood,” King wrote in a statement.
King said Bryant “showed grace and courage in forgiving his family and great love for those in and outside of his prison.”
“We will remember his unlikely friendships, his fierce protectiveness, and his love for nature, the water, and the world,” King wrote.
Firing squad vs. lethal injection drugs
The firing squad has a long and violent history around the world. Death by a hail of bullets has been used to punish mutinies and desertion in armies, as frontier justice in America’s Old West and as a tool of terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
But in recent years, it’s been revived in the U.S. Some lawmakers say it’s the quickest and most humane way to execute a person.
That’s since a number of botched executions by other methods, including lethal injection drugs. South Carolina and other states have struggled to maintain adequate supplies of lethal injection drugs.
In part because of this, South Carolina paused executions for 13 years. The state then restarted in September 2024, after which four men have been executed by lethal injection and three by firing squad. The state is among several where the electric chair is still legal.
King, the lawyer speaking on Bryant’s behalf, said each of the seven executions have been “brutal and shameful.”
“None has made South Carolina safer or more just,” King said.
The three other recent firing squad executions in the U.S. have been in Utah with none in that state since 2010. The method is also still legal in Idaho and a backup method if others aren’t available in Oklahoma and Mississippi.
The 2004 killings in rural South Carolina
Bryant admitted to killing Willard “TJ” Tietjen in October 2004 after stopping by his secluded home in rural Sumter County and saying he had car trouble.
Tietjen was shot several times. Bryant then answered Tietjen’s phone after it rang several times telling both his wife and daughter that he was the prowler and had killed them, prosecutors said.
Bryant also killed two men — one before and one after Tietjen. He gave the men rides and when they got out to urinate on the side of the road, he shot them in the back, authorities said.
During the search, officers stopped nearly everyone driving on dirt roads in the area just east of Columbia, and told people to be leery of anyone they did not know asking for help.
Bryant is the 43rd man killed by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S. At least 14 others are scheduled to be put to death during the remainder of 2025 and next year.
Bryant is also the 50th person executed in South Carolina since the state restarted the death penalty 40 years ago.
What happens during a firing squad execution
The curtain opens in the death chamber of the prison with fewer than a dozen witnesses sitting behind bulletproof glass.
The person is strapped into a chair. A white square with a red bull’s-eye target is placed over his heart by a doctor. Their lawyer can read a final statement. A prison employee then places a hood over the person’s head, walks across the small room and pulls open a black shade where the firing squad waits.
Without an audible or visual warning to witnesses, the shooters then fire high-powered rifles from 15 feet away.
A doctor will then come out within a minute or two, examine him and declare him dead.
Lawyers for the last man executed by a firing squad said the shooters nearly missed the heart of Mikal Mahdi. They suggested by barely hitting the bottom of the heart that Mahdi was in agonizing pain for three or four times longer than experts say he would have been if his heart had been hit directly.
