A South Carolina inmate on death row has opted for execution by firing squad, just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bullets. Mikal Mahdi, who pleaded guilty to murdering a police officer in 2004, is set to be executed on April 11.
Mahdi, 41, was given the choice of facing death by firing squad, lethal injection, or the electric chair. He will be the first prisoner executed in the state since Brad Sigmon selected to be shot to death on March 7. A doctor declared Sigmon dead in under three minutes after three bullets pierced his heart.
“Given the brutal and inhumane options, Mikal Mahdi has selected the firing squad as the lesser of three evils,” stated one of his attorneys, David Weiss. “Mahdi has opted for the firing squad over the electric chair’s burning and mutilation, or the slow death on the lethal injection table.”
Mahdi ambushed Orangeburg public safety officer James Myers at the officer’s shed in Calhoun County in July 2004. Myers had just returned from an out-of-town birthday celebration for his wife, sister, and daughter, according to prosecutors.
Myers’ wife discovered his charred body, with at least eight gunshot wounds, including two to the head, in the shed where they had been married less than 15 months earlier, authorities revealed.
During the execution, Mahdi will be seated 15 feet (4.6 meters) away from three prison staff members who volunteered for the firing squad. A target will be placed on his chest, and they will fire rifles loaded with a live round that shatters on impact with his rib cage.
Apart from Sigmon, only three other inmates in the U.S., all in Utah, have been executed by firing squad in the last 50 years. Sigmon was the first prisoner to be executed by bullets in the U.S. since 2010.
Mahdi’s legal team has filed a final appeal with the state’s highest court, arguing that Mahdi’s original trial for a life sentence lasted just 30 minutes, and his lawyers failed to call any witnesses on his behalf.
“The trial didn’t even last as long as an episode of Law & Order and was equally shallow,” they stated.
Numerous defense attorney organizations have submitted briefs arguing that no one should be executed when so little effort was made to defend them.
Mahdi’s attorneys mentioned that as a juvenile, he spent months in solitary confinement, which impacted his brain development and decision-making abilities.
After Mahdi pleaded guilty to murder, Judge Clifton Newman sentenced him to death, stating that a sense of humanity he sought in every defendant was absent in Mahdi.
Prosecutors responded to the claim of inadequate defense by pointing out that Mahdi was able to present more evidence during a 2011
Prosecutors stated that Mahdi has one final chance to spare his life by appealing to Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole just minutes before his scheduled execution at 6 p.m. on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. However, no South Carolina governor has granted clemency in the 47 executions that have taken place in the state since the resumption of the death penalty in the U.S. in 1976. Over the past seven months, South Carolina has carried out executions for Freddie Owens on September 20, Richard Moore on November 1, Marion Bowman Jr. on January 31, and Sigmon.
