South Carolina's highest 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. Stephen Bryant, 44, is scheduled to die at 6pm Friday by firing squad at a Columbia prison, per the AP. Lawyers for Bryant made a last-ditch appeal, arguing the judge who sentenced him to die never got to consider how badly his brain was damaged from his mother's alcohol and drug use while pregnant.
But the South Carolina Supreme Court rejected that appeal late Monday, writing that even if Bryant's defense had done more investigation into whether he had Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, it simply would have given a different reason for his problems while not changing the outcome of a death sentence. "By any stretch, (Bryant) demonstrated a high level of planning, decision making, and calculation," the justices wrote in Monday's unanimous decision.
- Bryant is being executed for killing Willard "TJ" Tietjen in his home in October 2004. Investigators said Bryant burned Tietjen's eyes with cigarettes after shooting him and painted "catch me if u can" and other taunting messages on the wall with the victim's blood. Prosecutors said he also shot and killed two men he was giving rides to as they stepped out of his truck to urinate over five days that terrorized Sumter County.
- Bryant can still ask the governor to reduce his death sentence to life in prison in a decision that, if made, won't be announced until minutes before the execution is set to start. No South Carolina governor has ever granted clemency in the modern era of the death penalty.
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