In this undated image, Stephen Bryant appears in court. (The Item via AP)
Stephen Bryant, 44, was executed by firing squad at a prison in Columbia on Friday, the South Carolina Department of Corrections said. He pleaded guilty to three murders committed during a 2004 crime spree in which he killed three people and scrawled the message “catch me if u can” in the blood of one victim.Bryant was shot by a three-person firing squad of volunteers and was pronounced dead at 6:05 pm (2305 GMT). South Carolina executed three convicted murderers by firing squad this year, the first such executions in the United States in 15 years, AP reported.Since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the vast majority of executions in the country were conducted by lethal injection. A man convicted of raping and murdering a six-year-old girl was executed by lethal injection in Florida on Thursday. It was that state’s 16th execution in 2025, the most in the nation. There were five each in Alabama and Texas.The South Carolina Department of Corrections said Bryant was restrained in a metal chair with a hood over his head 15 feet away from a wall with a rectangular opening. All three rifles had live ammunition and an “aim point” was placed over the condemned man’s heart.There were 43 executions in the United States this year, the most since 2012, when the same number of inmates were put to death. Thirty-five of this year’s executions were carried out by lethal injection, three by firing squad and five by nitrogen hypoxia, which involved pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate. The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment was denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others—California, Oregon and Pennsylvania—have moratoriums in place. President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and, on his first day in office, called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”