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A prisoner who murdered a man and then wrote “Catch me if you can” on a wall with his victim’s blood is to be hanged in November.
South Carolina‘S Supreme Court A death warrant was issued on Friday for 44-year-old Stephen Bryant.
His lawyers had asked for a delay because of the US government shutdown, as they work with the federal court system. However, this was refused.
Bryant will be the 50th person to be put to death in South Carolina since the state reopened death penalty In 1985.
He will be the seventh inmate to be executed in less than 14 months since the state was able to obtain medication for lethal injection and reopen the death chamber after an untimely 13-year pause.
Bryant will have until October 31 to choose whether he wants to die by lethal injection, firing squad or electric chair.
Since the pause, four inmates have opted for lethal injection and two have died by gunshot.
A total of 38 people have been hanged in America so far this year, including one prisoner who is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Friday. ArizonaAt least five more executions are scheduled to take place across the country in the remainder of 2025.
‘If you can catch me, catch me’
Bryant confessed to killing Willard “TJ” Tietjen after stopping at his secluded home in rural Sumner County and saying he was in car trouble.
Tietjen was shot several times. Candles were lit around his body. Someone took a potholder made by his daughter as a child, dipped the corner of it in blood and wrote on the wall, “4 victims in 2 weeks. Catch me if you can,” authorities said.
Tietjen’s daughter called him several times, becoming more worried when he did not answer. On the sixth call, a strange voice answered, she testified.
The person on the other end told him that he had the correct number. Then he demanded to speak to his father.
“And he said ‘You can’t, I killed him.’ And I said, ‘This isn’t funny, who are you?’ He said, ‘I am a hunter.’ And I said, ‘Excuse me, who are you?’ ‘I’m a predator,’ he said Kimberly Deese testified before a judge who determined Bryant’s sentence.
More murders terrorize Sumner County
Prosecutors said Bryant also killed two people – one before Tietjen and one after. He gave people rides and shot them in the back as they pulled out to urinate along deserted, rural roads.
As deputies searched for the killer, many of Sumter County’s 100,000 people lived in fear of random attacks. Authorities stopped almost everyone driving on dirt roads and told people to be wary of any strangers asking for help.
Bryant used drugs to ease pain from alleged abuse
Bryant’s lawyers said he was troubled in the months before the murder, pleading for help from a probation agent and his aunt because he couldn’t stop thinking about being sexually abused by four male relatives when he was a child.
“He was very upset. It looked like he was being tortured. It felt like his soul was torn open. In his eyes you could see he was feeling pain and suffering and he was reliving the abuse as it was coming out,” testified aunt Terri Calder.
His defense attorneys said Bryant tried to protect himself from pain by using meth and smoking joints, and he sprayed bug killer.
‘Cruel and unusual punishment’
Six inmates executed in South Carolina since September 2024 have argued that the state’s methods constitute cruel and unusual punishment, but would not have been able to prevent their deaths.
Lawyers for the prisoners say the firing squad, accompanied by three volunteers with rifles, nearly missed the heart of Mikal Mahdi, the second man killed. He suggested that the Mahdi would have remained in pain three or four times longer, according to experts, than if his heart had been attacked directly.
Convicted prisoners have also investigated lethal injection procedures, which now appear to use two doses of the powerful sedative pentobarbital. He said prisoners drown when their lungs fill with fluid but they also become paralyzed and unresponsive.
Witnesses to the four executions saw no signs of struggle and report that the prisoners lost consciousness in about a minute.