COLUMBIA, S.C. —

A South Carolina firing squad has executed a man Friday, the third person to die by that method in the state this year.

Three prison employees, all with live ammunition, volunteered to carry out the execution of Stephen Bryant, 44, who was pronounced dead at 6:05 p.m. Bryant killed three people in five days in a rural area of the state in 2004.

Bryant chose to die by firing squad instead of lethal injection or the electric chair.

He is the seventh person put to death by South Carolina in 14 months after the state had a 13-year pause in executions when it couldn’t obtain lethal injection drugs.

No South Carolina governor has offered clemency since the death penalty resumed in the U.S. in 1976.

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