South African executed in US for murder

Published Apr 22, 2001

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Carson City, Nevada - A South African national convicted of killing his estranged wife's lover in the desert outside Las Vegas has been executed at the Nevada State Prison.

Sebastian Stephanus Bridges, 37, was executed late on Saturday by injection after spending the day with his minister and dining on a final meal of crab salad, shrimp, lobster, mangoes, strawberry cheesecake and vanilla ice cream.

Bridges, wearing his double-breasted Pierre Cardin suit and strapped to a gurney in the prison's execution chamber, was injected with three lethal substances.

The execution was delayed for several minutes as Bridges' minister and lawyer tried desperately to get him to appeal. Bridges could be heard screaming, "I will not stop it."

He also said, "I killed nobody, nobody."

A few minutes later, strapped on the gurney in the execution chamber, Bridges raised his head and turned to the witnesses.

"This is murder," Bridges said.

Bridges, who had refused to give any interviews, had insisted in a final statement that he wasn't suicidal even though he wouldn't take advantage of available appeals.

Bridges said he was a victim of a corrupt criminal justice system and wanted no further litigation "within the non-existing and fictional appellate process..."

He termed his execution, for the 1997 murder of Hunter Blatchford, "an act of illegal state murder."

Early on Saturday Bridges met Michael Pescetta, the assistant federal defender who tried unsuccessfully to get him to take advantage of available appeals that would result in an automatic stay.

Bridges also met with the minister who had often counseled him and his ex-wife Laurie Bridges when their marriage was breaking up in 1997. The minister also urged the condemned man to appeal rather than die by injection.

Bridges asked the minister, from Thousand Oaks, California, where the condemned man once lived, to witness his death.

Other witnesses included Walt Blatchford, who traveled from Tennessee to view the execution of the man who killed his son.

"I feel no grief over what had happened here tonight," he said. "There is a somewhat twisted man there."

"It's a closure on a part of my life," the father said. "The loss of Hunter is something that no one in the family will ever really get over."

Earlier in the week, Governor Kenny Guinn said he wouldn't block the execution, Nevada's ninth since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in the 1970s. It was the first execution in the state since 1999.

"It's his decision, not mine," Guinn said. "All he has to say is 'I'm not walking in that room.' I'm not going to make that decision for him."

Bridges, who changed his name from Carl Coetzer, had repeatedly told public defenders that he wanted no appeals. He even sent word to the South African government to keep out of the case.

Blatchford was shot in the stomach and died in the desert outside Las Vegas. Laurie Bridges was present, and Bridges has alleged that she shot the victim - but he took the blame out of "fatal, unconditional love and loyalty to her."

Outside the prison, about 30 people held a vigil on the chilly, wind-swept night. Standing across the street around a makeshift altar with lighted candles on it, they chanted "Give peace to every heart" and held signs opposing the execution.

Father Chuck Durante led an earlier vigil at St Teresa of Avila Catholic Church to show opposition to what the congregants called state-assisted suicide.

"For Christians this day is in the octave of Easter," Durante said. "From Easter Day until a week later we celebrate life and hope. And tonight the state celebrates death." - Sapa-AP

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