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a man inside South Carolina He is scheduled to be executed by firing squad on Friday, making him the third person to die by this method in the state this year.
Three prison employees, all with live ammunition, have volunteered to execute Stephen Bryant, 44, who killed three people over five days in a rural area of the state in 2004.
Bryant has no appeals pending before his execution scheduled for 6 p.m. at the death row facility at Broad River Correctional Institution Colombia,
He can ask for clemency from the Governor and that decision will not be announced until a few minutes before the execution begins. But no South Carolina governor has offered clemency since the death penalty was reintroduced in the US in 1976.
Firing Squad vs Lethal Injection Drugs
Firing squads have a long and violent history around the world. Death As frontier justice in America, gunfire has been used to punish mutinies and desertions in armies old West and as a tool of terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
But in recent years, it has been revived in the US. Some lawmakers say it is the fastest and most humane way to execute a person.
This is because there have been many failed executions by other methods, including lethal injection drugs. South Carolina and other states have struggled to maintain an adequate supply of lethal injection drugs.
Partly because of this, South Carolina imposed a moratorium on executions for 13 years. The state reopened in September 2024, after which four people were executed by lethal injection and two by firing squad. This state is one of several states where the electric chair is still legal.
Three other recent firing squad executions in the US have taken place in Utah, with none in that state since 2010. This method is still legal in Idaho and is a backup method if others are not available in Oklahoma and Mississippi.
2004 murders in rural South Carolina
Bryant confessed to killing Willard “TJ” Tietjen in October 2004 after stopping at his secluded home in rural Sumner County and saying he was in car trouble.
Tietjen was shot several times. Prosecutors said Bryant then answered Tietjen’s phone after calling several times and told both his wife and daughter that he was a stalker and that he had killed them.
Bryant also killed two people – one before Tietjen and one after him. He gave people rides and when they pulled out to urinate on the side of the road, he shot them in the back, authorities said.
During the search, officers stopped almost everyone driving on dirt roads in the area just east of Columbia, and asked people to be wary of anyone they didn’t know asking for help.
Bryant’s lawyers said he was troubled in the months before the murder, seeking help from a probation agent and his aunt because he could not stop thinking about being sexually abused by a group of relatives as a child. He said he tried to deal with it by spraying bug killer, using meth and smoking joints.
Bryant will be the 43rd person to be executed on court order in the US so far this year. At least 14 other people are scheduled to be put to death during the remainder of 2025 and next year.
Bryant will be the 50th person executed in South Carolina since the death penalty resumed in the state 40 years ago.
What happens during a firing squad execution
At 6 p.m. Friday, the curtains will open on Columbia Prison’s death chamber, with fewer than a dozen witnesses sitting behind bulletproof glass.
Bryant would be tied to a chair. A doctor will place a white square aimed at the red bull’s eye over his heart. If Bryant’s attorney has a closing statement, he can read it. A prison employee would then place a hood over Bryant’s head, walk into the small room and open a black shed where the firing squad waited.
Without audible or visual warning to witnesses, shooters would fire high-powered rifles from up to 15 feet (4.6 m) away.
Then within a minute or two a doctor will come out, examine him and declare him dead.
lawyers The last person to be killed by firing squad was said to have almost hit Mikal Mahdi’s heart. He barely struck the lower portion of the heart, suggesting that the Mahdi remained in pain three or four times longer than he would have been if his heart had been attacked directly, according to experts.