EXCLUSIVE Blood-chilling autopsy reveals how firing squad 'BOTCHED' execution of death row inmate
State marksmen missed the heart of a South Carolina cop killer who chose to die by firing squad last month, botching his execution and causing him to suffer an excruciating, prolonged end, his attorneys claim.
Mikal Mahdi, 42, was put to death on April 11 for murdering an off-duty police officer in 2004.
Mahdi's attorneys said he opted to be executed by firing squad over lethal injection or electrocution because he believed it would be the quickest and most painless method of the three options.
However, an independent autopsy has suggested Mahdi's execution did not go according to plan and that the convicted killer endured pain well beyond the '10-to-15 second' window that was expected.
In documents filed in the Supreme Court on Thursday, Mahdi's attorneys claim that the state's three marksmen shot their client lower than expected, missing his heart and striking him just above the abdomen, piercing his liver and pancreas.
As the shots were fired, Mahdi cried out and his arms flexed, the AP reported. He was heard breathing and groaning for at least a minute after and wasn't officially pronounced dead for four minutes.
'The autopsy confirms what I saw and heard,' David Weiss, an attorney for Mikal Mahdi, told DailyMail.com in a written statement.
'Mikal suffered an excruciating death. We don't know what went wrong, but nothing about his execution was humane.
'The implications are horrifying for anyone facing the same choice as Mikal. South Carolina's refusal to acknowledge their failures with executions cannot continue.'
Mahdi, with a hood over his head, cried out as the three bullets to the heart hit him and his arms flexed. He groaned about 45 seconds afterward and his breaths continued for around 80 seconds before he took his final gasp
Mahdi's death marked the second time a death row inmate has been executed by firing squad this year in South Carolina.
The autopsy ordered by his attorneys found that Mahdi suffered only two distinct gunshot wounds to his torso, even though there were three gunmen, each possessing a live round.
His lawyers believe the execution was botched because either the volunteer prison employees missed or the target over Mahdi's chest to mark the location of his heart wasn't properly placed.
South Carolina's Corrections Department had earlier conducted its own autopsy on Mahdi, and suggested all three bullets had struck him, with two of them entering his body at the same spot and following the same path.
That has happened before during target practice, Corrections Department spokeswoman Chrysti Shane said to AP on Thursday.
Mahdi's legal team claimed the autopsy provided by the state was 'incredibly sparse, with far fewer details and photographs than normally issued.'
They also claim that there isn't enough evidence to support the Corrections Department's claim that two bullets entered the same spot.
'The shooters missed the intended target area and the evidence indicates that he was struck by only two bullets, not the prescribed three,' said Dr. Jonathan Arden, the pathologist hired by Mahdi's team.
Arden said it likely took Mahdi 30-60 seconds to lose consciousness, two to four times longer than predicted by experts hired by the state.
During that time, Mahdi likely endured intense pain as his lungs attempted to expand against shattered ribs and a broken sternum, while also experiencing "air hunger" - a desperate, suffocating sensation - as his damaged lungs failed to draw in enough oxygen, according to Dr. Arden.
'Mr. Mahdi elected the firing squad, and this Court sanctioned it, based on the assumption that SCDC could be entrusted to carry out its straightforward steps: locating the heart; placing a target over it; and hitting that target,' Mahdi's attorneys wrote in a letter to the South Carolina Supreme Court.
'That confidence was clearly misplaced.'
In a report summarizing his findings, Arden said the state's official autopsy did not include X-rays, which would have allowed for the results to be independently verified.
Arden also said that only one photo was taken of Mahdi's body, and no close-ups of the wounds; and his clothing was not examined to determine where the target was placed and how it aligned with the damage the bullets caused to his shirt.
'I noticed where the target was placed on Mikal's torso, and I remember thinking to myself, 'I'm certainly not an expert in human anatomy, but it appears to me that target looks low,'' said Mahdi's attorney, David Weiss.
Dr. Arden said that in his 40-year career, he has never heard of two bullets entering the same spot on a human body before.
The autopsy found damage in only one of the four chambers of Mahdi's heart - the right ventricle.
There was, however, extensive damage to his liver and pancreas, suggesting the marksmen aimed too low.
In contrast, in the execution of Brad Sigmon, who was killed by firing squad in South Carolina in March - the first to be carried out in the US for 15 years - his autopsy showed three distinct bullet wounds and his heart was 'obliterated', Arden said.
Sigmon's autopsy also included X-rays, multiple photographs, and an examination of his clothing.
Without X-rays or other internal scans, the state's two-bullets-through-one-hole claim cannot be substantiated, Arden added.
Attorney Weiss said the alleged errors in Mahdi's execution pose a major problem.
'I think that raises incredibly difficult questions about the type of training and oversight that is going into this process,' Weiss told AP.
'It was obvious to me, as a lay person, upon reading his autopsy report, that something went wrong here.
'We should want to figure out what it was that went wrong when you've got state government carrying out the most serious, most grave possible type of function.'
Mahdi's body has since been cremated, preventing any further tests.
The 42-year-old admitted to killing Public Safety officer James Myers in 2004, shooting him at least eight times before burning his body.
Myers' charred remains were discovered by his wife in a shed in their backyard, which had been the backdrop to their wedding just over a year earlier.
Mahdi also pleaded guilty to murdering a convenience store clerk three days before he killed Myers.
He was arrested in Florida while driving Myers' unmarked police pickup truck.
His attorneys had sought clemency from Governor Henry McMaster, but South Carolina's Republican chief executive has never granted any previous clemency petitions.
'Mr. Mahdi's life is a tragic story of a child abandoned at every step,' his lawyers said in a statement.
When Mahdi was four years old, his mother fled her abusive husband, and the boy was raised by his volatile, mentally ill father, they said.
'Between the ages of 14 and 21, Mikal spent over 80 percent of his life in prison and lived through 8,000 hours in solitary confinement,' his lawyers said.
'Now 42, Mikal is deeply remorseful and a dramatically different person from the confused, angry, and abused youth who committed the capital crimes.'
Mahdi's final appeal was rejected hours before his execution.
His sentence was carried out on the evening of April 11 at the death chamber at a Columbia prison with fewer than a dozen witnesses sitting behind bulletproof glass.
Mahdi was strapped to a chair, a hood put over his head, and a white square with a red bull's-eye was placed over his heart.
He made no final statement before his death and avoided eye contact with the gathered witnesses.
At his trial in 2004, prosecutor David Pascoe called Mahdi the 'epitome of evil.'
'His heart and mind are full of hate and malice,' Pascoe said.
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