Stephen Bryant execution eyewitness account
If you turn off of Broad River Drive, lined with smoke shops and fast food restaurants, and drive for a mile and a half through rolling fields, you will arrive at South Carolina’s death row.
Guards call it the CPF – Capital Punishment Facility. It sits behind three rows of chain link fence and razor wire. Next to it is a small red brick building. It has no windows and only one purpose: It contains South Carolina’s death chamber.
Inside this small, red brick room, South Carolina’s condemned inmates die by either firing squad, lethal injection or electric chair.
On Nov. 14, I took that winding drive through green fields to witness South Carolina’s third execution by firing squad.
State law governing the death penalty allows for the three media witnesses. On Friday night I was one of the witnesses to the execution of Stephen Bryant for the murder of three people.
In 2008, Bryant pleaded guilty to killing Willard Tietjen, Cliff Gainey and Christopher Burgess during an eight-day-long crime spree in Sumter, South Carolina.
Bryant’s lawyers argued that he suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and PTSD from childhood sexual abuse. But over almost two decades, multiple judges found that this was not enough to excuse his bizarre and violent crimes.
Over eight days, he broke into homes, stealing valuables and the gun he would use to wound one man and kill three others. Bryant was ultimately sentenced to death for the murder of Tietjen, a 62-year-old disabled man with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
The murder was bizarre and cruel. Bryant stubbed a cigarette in Tietjen’s eye and burned his beard. As he prowled the house searching for valuables, he answered phone calls from Tietjen’s wife and daughter and told them that Tietjen was dead. Before he left he wrote a message taunting the police in his victim’s blood.
State law requires death row inmates select their method of execution from firing squad, lethal injection or electric chair. Bryant chose the firing squad despite concerns that the last time it was used in an execution, the condemned man, Mikal Mahdi, appeared to yell in pain when he was shot. An autopsy revealed that the bullets did not destroy his heart and there were only two entry wounds, despite execution protocol calling for three rifle shots.
In South Carolina, executions are always scheduled for Friday at 6 p.m., four weeks after the state Supreme Court issues the “death warrant,” ordering the execution to take place.
A little after 4:30 p.m. Friday, two other journalists and I were ushered into a navy blue Dodge minivan driven by a prison director. As the sky turned blue and gold, we drove past trees with fall leaves, meadows full of grazing cows and flocks of geese bedding down for the night.
We stopped at a training center to be searched. We left our wallets, phones and watches in Ziploc bags before driving the final leg to death row in a caravan of six cars carrying the witnesses and their escorts. In the other cars were three members of Tietjen’s family, a federal public defender who represented Bryant and the solicitor who prosecuted him.
At the head of the line, a corrections department SUV flashed its police blue lights as the sun set. Arriving at death row, we passed through three gates guarded by heavily armed members of the corrections department’s elite special operations team.
Towering poles ringed at the top by sodium lamps cast an orange glow on the yard in front of death row. We sat in the car making nervous small talk and watching stray cats run between patches of darkness.
Just before 6 p.m., the car doors opened and there was no more talking allowed. Without a word we were led across the yard into the brick building housing the death chamber. The first shock was that you passed almost immediately from the outside into the witness room. The second shock was how small it was. We were handed orange foam earbuds and the ten witnesses filed into our seats.
There were three rows of pink beige chairs and bulletproof windows covered with metal bars. A brown curtain shielded the room beyond. No one spoke, but at 6 p.m. the curtain was pulled back to reveal the death chamber.
In the center of the room was the electric chair, covered in a black cloth. In the far left corner, Stephen Bryant was strapped to a metal chair. His legs were shackled, and his hands were covered in black mittens and strapped outstretched to his side. He wore black scrubs and slippers and a white target with a red bullseye the size of a Post-It note was pinned to his chest.
His tattoos were visible on his pale arms. A belt ran across his belly and a wide strap held his chin and neck in place. It squeezed his cheeks up, distorting his face and his brown mustache hung over the strap.
In past executions, men have looked at their attorneys, mouthed words or even attempted to give reassuring nods. Others have stared out at the room, locking eyes with everyone in attendance. When the curtain opened, Bryant glanced at the crowd for a moment and then looked straight ahead. It was the only time I saw him look our way.
Bryant’s last meal had been served on Wednesday. He requested spicy mixed seafood stir-fry fried fish, egg rolls, three stuffed shrimp, duck and soy sauce, two Zero candy bars, German chocolate cake and two Pepsi drinks.
He gave no statement, and at 6:01 p.m. he appeared to take several short, quick breaths, as if steeling himself, before a large black hood was placed over his head.
A corrections official raised a shutter on the far wall, 15 feet away, revealing a black slit divided into three gun ports. Aiming through those ports were three members of the department of corrections armed with rifles loaded with .308 Winchester TAP URBAN rounds, which are designed to penetrate and then fragment inside the body, pulverizing the organs.
The room was silent. The three members of the Tietjen family held hands.
A crack of three rifles snapped the silence. The witnesses jumped and Bryant’s body shuddered with impact as the target flew off halfway across the room.
Over the next minute he appeared to take several small breaths as a wet, dark patch of blood spread over his black shirt. Within a minute Bryant had stopped moving.
A man with a stethoscope and blue latex gloves entered the room, and for a minute he bent over Bryant, putting the stethoscope to different parts of his chest. At 6:05 a prison official declared that Bryant was dead and the curtain slid shut.
As the witnesses filed out of the room, we handed in our orange foam ear buds. We were warned in no uncertain terms that there would be no souvenirs.
Outside, the sky was fully dark and we climbed back into the car. Out of sight, Bryant’s body was transferred to a hearse and, if his family approves it, taken to an autopsy. Officially, his death will be recorded by the Richland County Coroner as a homicide.
Bryant was the 50th person executed since South Carolina restarted the death penalty 40 years ago. He was the 43rd person executed in the United States this year.
At last count, 25 men remain on South Carolina’s death row.