Mikal Mahdi, a 41-year-old death row inmate in South Carolina, has chosen to be executed by firing squad, making this the second such decision in the state in less than two months. Mahdi was sentenced to death for the 2004 murder of a police officer and is scheduled for execution on April 11. He was given the choice between lethal injection, electrocution, or a firing squad. The state’s last execution was of Brad Sigmon, who also selected death by firing squad on March 7.
David Weiss, one of Mahdi’s lawyers, said his client viewed the firing squad as the “least horrific” of the three options. Weiss elaborated that Mahdi found the electric chair, which he likened to “burning and mutilation,” and lethal injection, which he described as a “prolonged death,” to be more distressing.
In July 2004, Mahdi attacked James Myers, a public safety officer in Orangeburg, in his own shed in Calhoun County. Myers had just returned from a birthday party for his wife, sister, and daughter. His wife later found his body, which had been shot at least eight times, including twice in the head, in the shed that had been the setting for their wedding just over a year earlier.
For the execution, Mahdi will be positioned 15 feet away from three prison employees who volunteered for the firing squad. A target will be affixed to his chest, and the live rounds in their rifles will fragment upon hitting his rib cage. Over the past 50 years, only three other U.S. inmates, all in Utah, have been executed by firing squad. Sigmon was the first inmate to be executed by bullets in the U.S. since 2010.
Mahdi’s legal team has filed a final appeal with the state’s supreme court, arguing that his original trial, which lasted only 30 minutes, was insufficient. They assert that his defense team failed to summon any witnesses who could testify on his behalf. Several defense lawyer groups have submitted briefs supporting this argument, stating that no one should be executed after such a minimal effort to defend them.
Mahdi’s lawyers also contend that his judgment was impaired by the months he spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teenager, which they argue affected his developing brain. After Mahdi pleaded guilty to murder, Judge Clifton Newman sentenced him to death, stating that he could not find a sense of humanity in Mahdi that he usually tries to find in every defendant.
Prosecutors refuted the claim of inadequate defense by noting that Mahdi was able to present more evidence during a 2011 appeal, which was held inside a prison due to Mahdi’s previous attempt to escape by stabbing a death row guard. The appeal was ultimately dismissed.
Mahdi has one final opportunity to avoid execution. He can petition Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison without 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 in the state since the death penalty resumed in the U.S. in 1976.