South Carolina's highest court refuses to stop second firing squad execution
Mahdi's lawyers said his original attorneys put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.
But the state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, ruled that many of those arguments were made in earlier unsuccessful appeals and refused to stop Friday's scheduled execution so further hearings could be held.
Mahdi, who admitted killing an off-duty police officer in an ambush at the officer's Calhoun County shed, is the fifth person set to be executed in South Carolina in less than eight months. All made final appeals to the state Supreme Court but all were rejected.
Mahdi has one more opportunity to live, by asking Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to reduce his sentence to life in prison without parole just minutes before his scheduled execution time. He is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6 p.m. on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.
But no South Carolina governor has offered clemency in the 47 executions carried out in the state since the death penalty resumed in the U.S. in 1976.
Mahdi, 41, was convicted of killing Orangeburg Public Safety officer James Myers in 2004, shooting him at least eight times, then burning his body. Myers' wife found him in the shed, which had been the backdrop to their wedding 15 months earlier.
Myers' shed was a short distance through the woods from a gas station where Mahdi tried but failed to buy gas with a stolen credit card and left behind a vehicle he had carjacked in Columbia. Mahdi was arrested afterward in Florida while driving Myers' unmarked police pickup truck.
Mahdi also admitted to the killing three days earlier of Christopher Biggs, a Winston-Salem, North Carolina, convenience store clerk who was shot twice in the head as he checked Mahdi's ID. Mahdi was sentenced to life in prison for that killing.
Mahdi pleaded guilty to killing Myers, leaving a judge under South Carolina law to decide if he would be sentenced to death or life without parole.
Prosecutors called 28 witnesses for Circuit Court Judge Clifton Newman to hear. The defense called two, according to Mahdi's appeal.
The defense's case to spare Mahdi's life lasted only about 30 minutes. It 'didn't even span the length of a Law & Order episode, and was just as superficial,' Mahdi's lawyers wrote.
Prosecutors said Mahdi was able to present much more evidence during a 2011 appeal that had to be heard inside a prison because Mahdi had stabbed a death row guard during an escape attempt. A judge rejected the appeal.
'In Mahdi's vernacular, if his mitigation presentation before Judge Newman 'didn't even span the length of a Law & Order episode,' the review of any potential error is in its 24th season,' the state Attorney General's Office wrote in court papers.
As a prisoner, Mahdi has been caught three times with tools he could have used to escape, including a piece of sharpened metal that could be used as a knife, according to prison records. While he was on death row, he stabbed a guard and hit another worker with a concrete block, the records show.
'The nature of the man is violence,' prosecutors wrote.
Mahdi is to be the second inmate executed by South Carolina's new firing squad after Brad Sigmon chose that way to die last month.
The firing squad is an execution method with a long and violent history in the U.S. and around the world. Death in a hail of bullets has been used to punish mutinies and desertion in armies, as frontier justice in America's Old West and as a tool of terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Before Sigmon's execution last month, only three other prisoners in the U.S. had been executed by firing squad in the past 50 years. All were in Utah, most recently Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.
Three prison employees who volunteer for the role will fire high-powered rifles at Mahdi from 15 feet (about 4.5 meters) away, aiming for a target on his heart.
Mahdi also could have chosen the electric chair or lethal injection.
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Politico
2 hours ago
- Politico
Playbook: Trump's crackdown hits Washington
Presented by With help from Eli Okun, Bethany Irvine and Ali Bianco Good morning. I'm Zack Stanton. Get in touch. DRIVING THE DAY THE IN-BETWEEN: Yesterday morning, just off of 14th Street NW, a group of masked law enforcement officers arrested a moped driver. Onlookers stood near a coffee shop and the entrance to a luxury condo building, recording the altercation on their phones; WaPo reporter Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff was among them. Shouts from the crowd that the officers — whose vests read simply 'police' — identify the agency with which they were affiliated were dismissed. 'Do I have to answer to you?' one officer barked back, his question rhetorical. 'You've gotta answer to somebody,' yelled a pedestrian. The officers never identified themselves, never provided their badge numbers, never revealed their agency. They took the moped driver into an unmarked SUV and spirited him off, destination unknown. 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The Hill
3 hours ago
- The Hill
Hong Kong pro-democracy activists granted asylum in Australia and Britain
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Axios
4 hours ago
- Axios
GOP-led states sending National Guard troops to D.C.
The Republican governors of three states announced they will send state National Guard personnel to Washington, D.C., at the Trump administration's request. The big picture: The deployment of hundreds of additional troops, who will join the 800 already mobilized in the nation's capital, marks a major escalation in President Trump's takeover. Driving the news: South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster authorized the deployment of 200 Guard personnel from his state to support federal law enforcement activities, according to a Saturday statement. The deployment, per his office's statement, comes at the request of the Pentagon's National Guard Bureau and will be funded by the federal government under Title 32. Zoom out: Some 300 to 400 West Virginia Guard personnel will also be deployed to the District at the administration's request, Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced. "West Virginia is proud to stand with President Trump in his effort to restore pride and beauty to our nation's capital," he said in a statement. Those troops will be joined by 150 military police from the Ohio National Guard, sent by Gov. Mike DeWine, multiple outlets reported. Catch up quick: Trump on Monday announced a federal takeover of the District's police and deployment of National Guard troops in his push to crack down on crime and homelessness in D.C. Trump's memorandum, signed Monday, directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to coordinate with state governors to authorize additional Guard units as needed. The president has cast his crackdown as an effort to "take our Capital back," describing rampant lawlessness in a city where violent crime is trending down. Zoom in: The D.C. National Guard members — who, unlike Guard personnel in other states and territories, report to the president — have "broad latitude," Hegseth told Fox News Monday, but he noted they won't be involved in law enforcement functions. But if police aren't around, Hegseth said he "will have their back to ensure they can take the necessary action to protect citizens of D.C. and to protect themselves." He said troops could remain in D.C. for weeks or months but emphasized that it's "the president's call." Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told reporters Thursday that those personnel will not be making arrests, but they may "temporarily limit the movement of an individual who has entered restricted or secured area without permission."
