Second SC death row inmate chooses to die by firing squad

Yahoo

28-03-2025

The above shows the execution chamber in the Department of Corrections' Columbia prisons complex, as seen from the witness room. The firing squad chair (left) was added following a 2021 state law that made death by firing squad an option. The electric chair is under the cover. (Provided by the S.C. Department of Corrections)
COLUMBIA — Death row inmate Mikal Mahdi chose to die by firing squad, making him the second person in the state to do so since executions resumed, his attorneys said Friday.
Mahdi, 41, was sentenced to death in 2006 for shooting and killing off-duty police officer James Myers with his own rifle as part of a multi-state crime spree. The only remaining man on death row with no remaining appeals, Mahdi is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. April 11.
Brad Sigmon, executed March 7, was the first inmate in the state to die by firing squad, which legislators made an option in 2021. The three other inmates executed since September selected lethal injection.
By law, death row inmates have until two weeks before their execution date to choose whether they will die by firing squad, lethal injection or electrocution, which legislators made the default method in 2021. Mahdi chose 'the lesser of three evils,' his attorney, David Weiss, said in a statement Friday.
'Mikal chose the firing squad instead of being burned and mutilated in the electric chair, or suffering a lingering death on the lethal injection gurney,' Weiss said.
SC inmate executed by firing squad, a first nationwide since 2010
Legislators added firing squad as an option after years of struggling to get the drugs used for lethal injection. Inmates challenged the method, as well as electrocution, arguing it violated the constitutional right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment.
The state Supreme Court ruled last year that firing squad and electrocution were constitutional methods of execution, allowing the process to resume after a 13-year hiatus. By that point, lethal injection was again an option, after Department of Corrections officials were able to restock their supply thanks to a law keeping everything about the drugs and the companies selling them a secret.
Inmates have challenged that secrecy law, arguing inmates have a right to know more about the drugs that would kill them. But the state Supreme Court and a federal judge have both turned down those arguments, ruling officials have disclosed everything the law requires for an inmate to make his choice.
Barring intervention from a court or the governor, Mahdi would become the fifth in the nation to be executed by firing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Other than Sigmon, the remaining three took place in Utah, which last conducted a firing squad execution in 2010.
Mahdi will be strapped to a chair, facing three rectangular openings 15 feet away. Three firing squad members will shoot through those openings, using .308 Winchester bullets, which expand and fragment on impact, causing a more instantaneous death, corrections officials have said previously.
'Before Mikal committed these tragic murders, he was a child in desperate need of care and support,' Weiss said in a statement. 'We will continue to fight for the child Mikal was and the man he is today. Executing Mikal on this record would ignore the many ways we failed him in favor of one final injustice.'
On July 14, 2004, in his hometown of Lawrenceville, Virginia, Mahdi stole a car and a gun before fleeing south. Stopping in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Mahdi shot gas station clerk Christopher Boggs point-blank in the head while Boggs was verifying his ID to buy a beer, according to court documents.
Mahdi continued on to South Carolina, where he carjacked a man in Columbia and drove to Calhoun County. He stopped at a gas station, where a clerk seemed to grow suspicious after the gas pump declined his card. Mahdi fled on foot to a nearby farmhouse, where he hid out in Myers' workshop.
When Myers, a captain for the Orangeburg Department of Public Safety, returned home at the end of the day, Mahdi shot him nine times with one of the rifles Myers kept there, according to court documents.
Mahdi lit Myers' body on fire and stole his police truck, which he continued driving south. Police arrested Mahdi in Satellite Beach, Florida, on July 21, 2004, a week after he stole the first car.
Mahdi pleaded guilty to the crimes in 2006, at which point Judge Clifton Newman sentenced him to death.
SC death row inmate's attorneys ask court to halt execution over traumatic childhood
Mahdi's attorneys have asked the state Supreme Court to halt his execution, claiming a traumatic childhood influenced his development and led him to a life of crime.
Mahdi's original defense attorneys hardly touched on his past, which could have convinced Newman to sentence him to life in prison instead of death, Mahdi's current attorneys argued in court filings.
As a child, Mahdi struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts, his attorneys claimed. He entered the juvenile justice system at age 14 for committing property crimes and spent most of his life in jails after that point, often in solitary confinement, his attorneys said.
Mahdi had been out of jail for about two months when he committed the crimes that landed him on death row.
'When we think of Mikal choosing his method of execution, we're reminded of the tormented child who, at nine years old, told his teacher that he wanted to shoot himself. Or, on another occasion, to electrocute himself. Or, another time, to hang himself,' Weiss said in a statement Friday.
But Mahdi's attorneys didn't show anything the court hasn't already considered and dismissed during the appeals process, the Attorney General's Office responded in a filing this week. Mahdi's difficult childhood and the impact it may have had on him have no legal bearing on his crime, the attorneys continued.
The state Supreme Court has not yet given a decision on the arguments.
The state's highest court, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, has yet to rule in favor of stopping a South Carolina inmate's execution in the past six months. Mahdi can also appeal to Gov. Henry McMaster for clemency, which no governor has granted in the modern era.