Latest news with #SCDC
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Yahoo
Inmate found dead in cell at Lee Co. Correctional
LEE COUNTY, S.C. (WSPA) – An inmate's death at the Lee Correctional Institution is under investigation in Lee County. 40-year-old Leo Jermaine Cheeks was found unresponsive in his cell Saturday morning. Cheeks was serving for second-degree burglary, and was initially completing his sentence at the Broad River Correctional Institute. On April 8, Cheeks was transferred to Lee Correctional. The SCDC Inspector General's Office said that Cheeks's death is being treated as suspicious, and that an autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Yahoo
Killer executed by firing squad died in ‘excruciating conscious pain' after bullet missed heart, report says
A convicted killer who was executed in South Carolina by firing squad last month endured 'excruciating conscious pain and suffering' for up to a minute when the shooters 'largely missed his heart,' causing him to suffer a prolonged death, according to his attorneys. Mikal Mahdi, 42, cried out as the bullets hit him and groaned twice before he took his final gasp of breath, the Associated Press reported. The firing squad execution of Mahdi on April 11 is the second one to be carried out this year in South Carolina using the controversial method. Now Mahdi's attorneys have submitted a status report with the South Carolina Supreme Court on Thursday, claiming their client's death was a 'massive botch.' 'The implications of this botch are horrifying,' the attorneys wrote in the 'Notice of Botched Execution' report obtained by The Guardian. Citing a third-party autopsy report commissioned by the SCDC, the lawyers claim several alleged mistakes were made by the corrections department shooters, writing that they fired two shots instead of three, as required, and indicated that their low placement of shots, all ultimately led to Madhi's 'suffering.' Madhi appeared to have two half-inch wounds that were 'just above the border with the abdomen, which is not an area largely overlying the heart,' Dr. Jonathan Arden, one of the pathologists from the autopsy, noted in the report, according to the Supreme Court notice. 'The autopsy also documents two distinct wound paths that traveled 'downward and to the right' inside Mr. Mahdi's torso, 'macerat[ing] the left lobe of the liver and the pancreas' and 'the left lower lung lobe' before crashing into his spine and ribs,' the document says, quoting Arden's report. 'Along the way, bullet fragments made 'two perforations of the right ventricle of [Mr. Mahdi's] heart, comprising two holes in the front, and two holes in the back,' leaving it otherwise intact.' Mahdi's attorneys wrote that they felt obliged to share the information with the court and other inmates who will face this same dilemma. They said Mahdi had the choice of dying by firing squad, lethal injection, or the electric chair – and that he had chosen the firing squad, what he considered the 'lesser of three evils', his attorneys said. '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,' the attorneys wrote in the report. 'That confidence was clearly misplaced.' Mahdi had been on death row for the killing of 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. He had 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's execution came a little over a month after Brad Sigmon was put to death March 7, in the first U.S. firing squad death in 15 years and the fourth since 1976. The others all occurred in Utah. The firing squad is an execution method with a long and violent history around the world, but South Carolina lawmakers saw it as the quickest and most humane method, especially with the uncertainty in obtaining lethal injection drugs, the Associated Press reported.
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- The Guardian
Revealed: Autopsy suggests South Carolina botched firing squad execution
A South Carolina firing squad botched the execution of Mikal Mahdi last month, with shooters missing the target area on the man's heart, causing him to suffer a prolonged death, according to autopsy records and his attorneys. Mahdi, 42, was shot dead by corrections employees last month in the second firing squad execution this year in South Carolina. The state has aggressively revived capital punishment over the last seven months and brought back the controversial firearm method that has rarely been used in the modern death penalty era. Autopsy documents and a photo reviewed by the Guardian, along with analysis commissioned by Mahdi's lawyers, suggest the execution did not occur according to protocol, and that Mahdi endured pain beyond the '10-to-15 second' window of consciousness that was expected. Mahdi's lawyers submitted the records to the South Carolina supreme court on Thursday. The South Carolina department of corrections (SCDC) and the state's attorney general have been contacted for comment. Mahdi was sentenced to death in 2006, and the execution was carried out on 11 April. On the evening of his killing, Mahdi was brought into the state's execution chamber, strapped to a chair and had a red bulls-eye target placed over his heart. Witnesses were positioned behind bulletproof glass, and three prison employees on the firing squad stood roughly 15ft (4.6 metres) away. Officials placed a hood over Mahdi's head before the staff fired, according to an Associated Press reporter, who was a witness. As shots were fired, Mahdi cried out and his arms flexed, and after roughly 45 seconds, he groaned twice, the AP said. His breaths continued for around 80 seconds, then a doctor examined him for a minute. He was declared dead roughly four minutes after the shots. South Carolina regulations call for the shooters to fire bullets 'in the heart … using ammunition calculated to do maximum damage to – and thereby immediately stop – the heart'. But the autopsy report commissioned by SCDC indicates there were only two gunshot wounds, not three, and that the bullets hit his pancreas, liver and lower lung, and largely missed his heart. Dr Bradley Marcus, the pathologist who performed the autopsy for the state, described two roughly half-inch gunshot wounds on Mahdi's chest, but suggested three shots might have been fired, writing: 'It is believed that gunshot wound labeled (A) represents two gunshot wound pathways.' But Dr Jonathan Arden, a forensic pathologist retained by Mahdi's lawyers, wrote in a report submitted to the court that it would be 'extraordinarily uncommon' for multiple bullets to enter through one wound. Arden also interviewed Marcus for his report and said the state's pathologist was 'surprised to find only two wounds' and took a photograph to send to SCDC, which clearly showed two wounds. Arden said Marcus also acknowledged the odds were 'remote' that two shots made a single wound. Arden said the wounds were on the lowest area of Mahdi's chest, near the abdomen, and that the bullets had a 'downward' trajectory that mostly missed the heart. In the first firing squad execution of Brad Sigmon in March, the bullets 'obliterated both ventricles of the heart', but in Mahdi's body, there were only four perforations of the right ventricle, Arden wrote. Arden said Marcus, too, 'expected the entrance wounds to be higher' and 'did not expect to find such severe damage to the liver', according to Arden's summary of their call. 'If the procedure is done correctly, the heart will be disrupted, immediately eliminating all circulation,' wrote Arden, who previously testified in litigation challenging firing squads. Because 'the shooters missed the intended target area,' Mahdi continued to have circulation, allowing him to remain conscious for up to a minute, said Arden, noting the AP's report of his groaning after 45 seconds. Mahdi suffered a 'more prolonged death process than was expected had the execution been conducted successfully according to the protocol' and experienced 'excruciating conscious pain and suffering for about 30 to 60 seconds', Arden concluded. 'Among the questions that remain: did one member of the execution team miss Mr Mahdi entirely? Did they not fire at all? How did the two who did shoot Mr Mahdi miss his heart?,' Mahdi's attorneys wrote to the court. 'Did they flinch or miss because of inadequate training? Or was the target on Mr Mahdi's chest misplaced? The current record provides no answers.' Arden's report noted the autopsy did not involve X-rays or examination of Mahdi's clothes to assess the target's placement. When the state supreme court issued a ruling authorizing firing squads last year, it assessed whether the method was considered 'cruel' based on the 'risk of unnecessary and excessive conscious pain'. The court, citing Arden's testimony in the litigation, concluded it was not cruel because the pain, even if excruciating, would only last 10 to 15 seconds 'unless there is a massive botch of the execution in which each member of the firing squad simply misses the inmate's heart'. Mahdi's lawyers said 'a massive botch is exactly what happened': '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. That confidence was clearly misplaced.' 'I don't think any reasonable, objective observer can look at what happened and think we can keep setting execution dates,' David Weiss, Madhi's lawyer who sat as a witness, said in an interview. 'I heard Mikhal's cries of pain and agony, and I don't want that to happen to somebody else.' South Carolina had ceased executions for 13 years as it struggled to obtain lethal injection supplies, but resumed last year, directing people on death row to choose either firing squad, electric chair or injection. Weiss is a federal public defender and part of the capital habeas unit for the fourth circuit, which has represented four of the five people executed in rapid succession by South Carolina. The lawyers have said that two of the executions by injections of pentobarbital, a sedative, took more than 20 minutes to cause death, in one case appearing to lead to a condition akin to suffocation and drowning. Mahdi chose what he considered the 'lesser of three evils', the attorneys said. 'Lethal injections were adopted because they were supposed to be more humane with a lower risk of error, but as more information became available, we realized it was actually quite tortuous,' said Weiss. 'And the intent of the firing squad was that in some ways it would be simpler, quicker, more straightforward, harder to make mistakes. But they couldn't get that right either.' A human rights report last year chronicled 73 botched lethal injection executions in the last 50 years, which have disproportionately impacted Black people on death row. Alabama began using an untested nitrogen gas method last year, claiming it was 'perhaps the most humane' option, but in its first case, witnesses reported that the man's body began violently shaking, and it took roughly 22 minutes to kill him. There have only been three other firing squad executions in the last 50 years, though Idaho recently adopted legislation making shootings the main method of killings.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Yahoo
Ex-Lieber Correctional inmate charged after extorting $27K from victim
RIDGEVILLE, S.C. (WCBD) – A former inmate at Lieber Correctional Institution is facing a slew of charges after extorting $27,000 from a victim while being held at the Ridgeville prison. Christopher Lewis Dendy, Jr., 27, is charged with blackmail/extortion, money laundering, possession of a cell phone by a prisoner, and violating the Computer Crime Act. Warrants provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections said Dendy used a contraband cell phone to create a fake female profile on a dating app, which he 'matched' with a victim. A conversation began between the two, which led to the exchange of images deemed sexual between the victim and a person he thought was a legal-aged female. Dendy is accused of then contacting the victim and claiming the female was a minor and threatened him with criminal exploitation charges unless he paid. 'The victim suffered a financial loss of over $27,000 through a series of Cash App payments made by two accounts,' arrest warrants said. The victim lived in another state. Dendy was serving a 10-year sentence at the prison for voluntary manslaughter, armed robbery, and drug charges. He was scheduled to be released on April 1 to community supervision in Greenville. Instead, he was released to the custody of the Dorchester County Detention Center, where he was served with criminal charges. SCDC officials said his bond was set at $120,000 cash. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
BBC News
24-03-2025
- General
- BBC News
Aircraft climbing frame honours WW2 legacy in Weston Colville
A climbing frame created in the shape of a World War Two military aircraft has been installed at a village playground to honour its local wartime Lancaster Bomber play equipment was designed specially for Weston Colville in Cambridgeshire, close to a former airfield that played an important role in 1943-45 bombing new playground was designed and built with grant funding from several organisations, including more than £20,000 from central McDonald, lead cabinet member for economic development for South Cambridgeshire District Council (SCDC), said the project was "one of the best examples" of projects in the area, helped by the Rural England Prosperity Fund. The playground is close to RAF Wratting Common, on the Cambridgeshire-Suffolk Bombers which flew out of the base engaged in bombing campaigns in Germany in the latter stages of World War also air-dropped food to people in countries that had been invaded, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, and helped repatriate prisoners of war. The idea to build the bomber-themed frame, which also features a slide, came from Bedfordshire-based company Setter Play McDonald said the climbing frame would give local children "a sense of their own history and the village's history", adding: "This kind of project helps to bring all that to life." "We wanted a big statement piece that would fit with the area," Jess Ashbridge, clerk of Weston Colville Parish Council, said. "We were thinking of a tractor or something similar because we're a very rural area, but Setter Play came back and said you need a Lancaster Bomber."We're absolutely thrilled with it because it is so unique."The playground's design also had input from a local working group, which included 18-year-old Daniel Jackson, who put together designs as part of his Extended Project Qualification (EPQ).The student, from Long Road Sixth Form College, in Cambridge, said he particularly "liked researching into different ways to make the playground inclusive".It features a "combi-swing", which allows a parent to sit next to a small child and a roundabout which is accessible to wheelchairs and pushchairs. His mother, Jo Jackson, from the Weston Colville Reading Room, said the playground was "so important for our identity", because the village had lost its pub and post playground is one of two in the village and can be found on the edge of its cricket club to build it came from the National Lottery, Thalia Waste Management, Wadlow Wind Farm, the parish council, Reading Room and local largest portion, which paid for the bomber, came from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), via the district council. Follow Cambridgeshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
