The South Carolina Supreme Court has refused to stop the execution of a man who killed three people over five days more than 20 years ago, while leaving taunting messages for police in the blood of one of his victims.
Steven Bryant, 44, is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Friday in a shooting at a Columbia prison.
Bryant's lawyers filed a final appeal, arguing that the judge who sentenced him to death never took into account how badly his brain was damaged by his mother's alcohol and drug use during pregnancy.
Stephen Bryant's final appeal rejected
But the South Carolina Supreme Court late Monday rejected that appeal, writing that even if Bryant's defense had conducted further investigation into whether he had fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, it would simply have given a different reason for his problems and would not have changed the outcome of the death sentence.
“In any event, (Bryant) demonstrated a high level of planning, decision-making and calculation,” the justices wrote in Monday's unanimous decision.
Bryant is being executed for the murder of Willard “TJ” Tietjen at his home in October 2004. Investigators said Bryant burned Tietjen's eyes with cigarettes after shooting him and painted “catch me if you can” and other taunting messages on the wall with the victim's blood.
Prosecutors said he also shot and killed two men he gave rides as they got out of his truck to urinate over a five-day period that terrorized Sumter County.
File an appeal detailing Bryant's mother's abuse and alcohol use during pregnancy
What could their final appeal be? Bryant's lawyers said that while his original defense team said he was nervous in the months before the killings because he couldn't stop thinking about being sexually abused by relatives as a child, they did not elaborate on how that abuse affected his ability to obey the law.
According to court documents, Bryant's lawyers said that before his trial in 2008, he did not have a full brain scan that could have revealed intrauterine damage that was never repaired.
They also included what they said was newly discovered evidence, including an interview with a clinical psychologist in 2024 in which Bryant described abuse he suffered from male relatives, his mother, a preacher's wife and several strippers in his area before he became a teenager.
The judges sided with prosecutors, who said the three killings, along with another shooting and two burglaries, mostly on dirt roads in rural Sumter County east of Columbia, were not impulsive crimes caused by brain damage but were methodical and cunning.
Bryant could still ask the governor to commute his death sentence to life in prison, a decision which, if accepted, would not be announced until minutes before the execution began. No South Carolina governor has ever granted clemency in the modern era of capital punishment.
Stephen Bryant decided to die by firing squad
Bryant will be the third person shot in South Carolina this year.
Outside of South Carolina, only three other prisoners in the United States have been executed by firing squad since 1977. All were in Utah, most recently Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.
Bryant's execution will be the seventh in South Carolina since executions resume in September 2024. All others chose execution by lethal injection after the state was unable to obtain the necessary drug due to a secrecy law. The state also has the electric chair.
Bryant will have a hood placed over his head before three volunteers shoot him from 15 feet away.
VIDEO: Second shooting in South Carolina
