A TRIPLE murderer has been executed by firing squad in front of his victims’ relatives, two decades after his violent rampage.
Stephen Bryant, 44, admitted to killing Willard “TJ” Tietjen, 62, in October 2004, after stopping by his secluded home in Sumter County, claiming to have car trouble.
Bryant also murdered two other men – his friend, 26-year-old Clifton Gainey and 35-year-old stranger Christopher Burgess.
All three murders happened over the span of five days.
Clinton Brown, 56, is Bryant’s only surviving victim, after he was also shot in the back and left for dead.
Bryant later confessed to police, saying he fatally shot Tietjen, before burning his eyes with cigarettes and painting “Victim four in two weeks – catch me if you can” on the wall with his victim’s blood.
Tietjen’s daughter was unable to contact him after calling five times, before Bryant picked up the phone and admitted to having killed her father.
Investigators said Bryant had given both his other victims rides before shooting them in the back during pit-stops.
Bo King, a lawyer who works on death penalty cases in South Carolina, told the media that Bryant had a genetic disorder, had been a victim of sexual and physical abuse by relatives and that his mother’s binge drinking during pregnancy had “permanently damaged his body and brain”.
In a statement that formed a last ditch effort to save the killer, King wrote that Bryant’s “impairments left him unable to endure the tormenting memories of his childhood”.
The Supreme Court ultimately declined to review his death sentence.
The murderer chose to die by firing squad over lethal injection and the electric chair last month.
He offered no final statement, before he was executed on Friday, at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.
Local media reported that he looked at the 10 witnesses briefly, before he was hooded.
He made no sound after the shots rang out.
The red bullseye target was placed on his chest prior to the execution.
He made a few shallow breaths before a doctor declared him dead at 6.05pm.
Three family members of his victims were among the witnesses to his execution.
He had a spicy mixed seafood stir-fry, fried fish over rice, egg rolls stuffed with shrimp, two candy bars and German chocolate cake as his last meal.
Bryant is the third criminal this year to be executed in South Carolina by firing squad, and the seventh person put to death in the state over the last 14 months.
Death by firing squad is South Carolina’s newest execution method, after it struggled to find alternative methods to execute condemned inmates.
Three members of prison staff volunteered to carry out the execution.
State-sanctioned executions restarted in September last year, after a 13-year pause in the practice, as the state couldn’t obtain lethal injection drugs.
The lack of supply was due to pharmaceutical companies refusing to sell the drugs without anonymity.
A defence attorney who witnessed the last firing-squad execution in April described the method as “barbaric” and “a horrifying act that belongs in the darkest chapters of history.”
Protesters also gathered outside the prison, holding signs quoting bible verses, including “thou shalt not kill”.
Utah, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Idaho also use the execution method.
