3 days ago
7
A South Carolina antheral convicted of killing 3 radical implicit 5 days much than 20 years agone was executed by a firing squad connected Friday evening.
Stephen Bryant, 44, was executed for sidesplitting a antheral successful his location and penning "catch maine if u can" connected the partition with the victim's blood. He was pronounced dormant astatine 6:05 p.m. pursuing a firing squad. Three situation employees, each with unrecorded ammunition, volunteered to transportation retired the execution. Bryant is the third man this twelvemonth to dice by South Carolina's newest execution method.
Lawyers for Bryant filed a last-minute appeal, arguing the sentencing justice ne'er considered the terrible encephalon harm helium suffered owed to his mother's cause and intoxicant usage during pregnancy. The Supreme Court declined in October to reappraisal Bryant's decease sentence.
Bryant was convicted successful the 2004 sidesplitting of a antheral successful his home, and investigators said helium burned Willard "TJ" Tietjen's eyes with cigarettes aft shooting him and coating connected the partition with the victim's blood.
Prosecutors said helium besides changeable and killed 2 different men helium was giving rides to arsenic they were relieving themselves connected the broadside of the roadworthy during a fewer weeks that terrorized Sumter County successful October 2004.
In March, South Carolina carried retired the nation's first execution by firing squad successful 15 years. The authorities has utilized a firing squad to enactment to decease 3 of 5 inmates this year.
South Carolina turned to the firing squad as it struggled to find alternate methods to execute condemned inmates. By the aboriginal 2010s, the authorities had tally retired of lethal injection drugs, and nary shaper would merchantability much without anonymity, a information the instrumentality didn't permit. Judges refused to docket executions if electrocution was the lone option. As a result, executions halted for 13 years, and decease enactment cases began to stack up.
Death enactment executions successful the United States are on the rise, aft creeping upward since the pandemic, erstwhile the country's usage of the death penalty reached a historical low.
More than 40 executions person been carried retired truthful acold successful 2025 and 3 were scheduled for this week, but lone 2 took place: 1 successful 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 successful his state.
English (US) ·