South African killer executed

A South African national convicted of killing his estranged wife’s lover in the desert outside Las Vegas was executed last night at the Nevada State Prison.

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

Bridges, wearing a double-breasted designer 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 protested his innocence to the end. ‘‘I killed nobody, nobody,’’ he said.

A few minutes later, Bridges raised his head and turned to the witnesses.

‘‘This is murder,’’ he said.

Bridges, who had refused to give any interviews, had insisted in a final statement that he was not suicidal even though he would not 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.’’

Bridges met early yesterday with 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 counselled 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.

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

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

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.

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’’.