The chamber where the Utah Department of Corrections carried out execution by lethal injection is pictured. (Photo courtesy of Utah Department of Corrections)
COLUMBIA — The death row inmate convicted for a 2003 infamous shootout that left two officers dead is asking the state Supreme Court to halt his pending execution while an Abbeville County court determines whether he is mentally competent.
Steven Bixby, 57, is one of four inmates who have exhausted their normal appeals processes and could receive an execution warrant in the coming months. If the high court sticks to its five-week schedule of executions when the process resumes Jan. 3, Bixby would be scheduled to die May 16.
His attorneys filed in both Abbeville County and the state Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Bixby was convicted in 2007 of killing two police officers four years earlier during a daylong standoff on his family’s Abbeville property.
After state transportation officials tried to use eminent domain authority to expand a highway over a piece of the property, Bixby and his father stationed themselves at the house’s windows and shot at anyone who approached.
The deadly shootout on Dec. 8, 2003, ended with Bixby and both of his parents permanently removed from the property.
Bixby’s mother, Rita Bixby, was sentenced to life in prison for planning the ambush. His father, Arthur Bixby, was found unfit to stand trial because he had dementia. Both died in 2011, his mother in prison and his father in a mental institution.
If the state’s high court agrees to the stay, Bixby would join two other inmates who have no remaining appeals but are waiting decisions about whether they are competent for execution.
Gary Terry, sentenced to death for raping and killing a woman in 1997, is awaiting a decision from a Lexington County judge as to whether the state can execute him. And John Wood is awaiting a hearing to determine whether he is competent to die for shooting and killing a Highway Patrol officer in Greenville in 2000.
What happened?
Tensions began days before the shooting, when Department of Transportation officials discovered someone had tampered with the surveyor’s stakes marking the expansion of S.C. Highway 72.
The Bixby family told officials they did not believe the department actually held a right of way on the small corner of their property that officials planned to take over, according to court documents.
That weekend, the Bixbys repeatedly told friends and acquaintances they would resort to violence to keep transportation officials off their property. At one point, Bixby told a neighbor that “they’ll take my land over my cold, dead body,” the neighbor later testified.
Bixby told an ex-girlfriend that “if anybody comes in the yard, we will shoot, and if the shooting starts, I won’t come out alive,” she testified.
Fearing the situation might get violent, transportation officials asked local police officers to come with them to the meeting they had scheduled with the Bixbys that Monday morning.
Sheriff’s Deputy Danny Wilson, a 37-year-old father of five, was the first to arrive, around 9 a.m. Bixby shot Wilson as he approached the door, then dragged his body into the house, where Bixby handcuffed him and read him his Miranda Rights, he later said.
Transportation officials arriving later found Wilson’s car in the driveway but no sign of him. They circled the block a few times, noticing peepholes cut into the blinds.
Other police officers arrived, and Bixby shot at them again through the windows. One shot fatally wounded Constable Donnie Ouzts, a 63-year-old father of two whose body other officers retrieved.
For more than 12 hours, the Bixbys exchanged gunfire with local and state law enforcement officers. Using robots, police were able to survey the scene and see that Bixby’s father had been injured. At around 11 p.m., Arthur Bixby surrendered to police, and Steven Bixby gave himself up soon after, according to court documents.
Their bullet-riddled house stood as a reminder of the carnage until 2018, when an Abbeville resident bought the property in a tax lien sale and signed the deed to the county to demolish it.
‘Bizarre and paranoid’
Previous evaluations found that Bixby’s beliefs were unusual but did not veer into mental illness, meaning he could stand trial.
Bixby and his family had extremist views about government authority and the U.S. Constitution, often aligning with those of the “sovereign citizens” movement of people who believe the law does not apply to them, according to court documents.
Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s determination, which finds inmates incompetent only if they are unable to grasp what their execution means or the link between their crime and the punishment, Bixby would still be eligible for execution, wrote forensic psychologist Richart DeMier, who evaluated Bixby between January and May for his defense team.
But under the South Carolina Supreme Court’s definition, Bixby should not face the death chamber, DeMier wrote in a report submitted to the high court as part of Tuesday’s filing.
South Carolina has two methods of determining competency. An inmate can’t be executed if they don’t understand the court proceedings, what they were tried for, the reason for their sentence, or what their sentence means. An inmate can also be found incompetent if they do not have “sufficient capacity or ability to rationally communicate” with their attorneys, according to the high court’s decision in a previous competency case.
During conversations with DeMier, Bixby was able to understand what execution meant and why he was sentenced to death, though he contended that his crime was justified. But his inability to understand the evidence against him makes him unable to understand the case, and his “bizarre and inaccurate beliefs about the legal system” have made him unable to communicate effectively with his attorneys, DeMier wrote.
Bixby’s attorneys can’t trust any information he gives them about his background or his relationship with his parents because he refuses to engage with any potentially negative conversations about his parents and downplays his siblings’ reports of abuse, DeMier wrote.
Bixby has also developed “belief in bizarre and paranoid concepts,” the evaluation found.
The inmate told DeMier that he believed prison officials had injected him with a tracking device, that death row inmates are “traded like hogs on the stock market,” that he often found divine messages in numbers that he used to justify his crime, that officials destroyed his school and medical records, that the blood found on his clothing contains the DNA of Christ, and that crime scene photos show that an angel was present, DeMier wrote.
No more death row executions until January, SC Supreme Court decides
“Mr. Bixby’s bizarre beliefs have apparently rendered him totally unable to understand the most basic legal procedures available at this stage of his case,” DeMier wrote.
Both of Bixby’s parents showed symptoms of mental illness. Arthur Bixby was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and Rita Bixby was often described as volatile and paranoid. Corrections staff reported that she experienced delusions, according to court documents.
“The content of the delusions was not specified, but it is evident that many of Mr. Bixby’s unusual beliefs were learned from his mother,” DeMier wrote.
Two inmates have been executed since the state resumed in September carrying out death sentences.
Executions were halted for years as the prisons agency struggled to resupply the drugs used for lethal injection. Legislators changed the default execution method to electrocution and added firing squad as an option, which the state Supreme Court upheld as constitutional in July.
Lethal injection is also an option again after a law keeping all information about the supplier secret allowed officials to purchase more.