Latest news with #capitalPunishment
Daily Mail
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Britain needs the death penalty - I know because I witnessed the 'horrible' executions of two heinous murderers, PETER HITCHENS tells SARAH VINE on latest episode of provocative Mail podcast
Britain needs to reinstate the death penalty as a deterrent against the most cruel and unusual crimes, acclaimed broadcaster Peter Hitchens has told co-host Sarah Vine on the latest episode of the Mail's Alas Vine & Hitchens podcast. The best-selling author argued that the logic in having the death penalty is 'inexorable', with scientific developments in the DNA analysis of crime scenes now meaning 'very few' falsely accused people would receive capital punishment. Hitchens revealed that during his time as a correspondent in America, he forced himself to witness two executions, one by lethal injection, the other by electrocution, to test his convictions in the practice. He explained to Mail columnist Sarah Vine that although the experience was 'horrible', his view on the death penalty remained unchanged, permitting its use under 'very strict conditions.' 'I concluded about 30 years ago that I supported the death penalty under very strict conditions', Hitchens began. 'When challenged, I couldn't deny it. I instantly made myself a lot of enemies among the sort of people I knew then. It is an absolute test in modern liberal Britain: if you support the death penalty, then you're some knuckle-brushing barbarian. 'The logic for it is inexorable – the thing which put the capstone on it for me was witnessing two executions in the United States. I thought I should face the thing I had supported and in a sense, willed. 'I went to these executions – now, no one can say to me: 'Well if you'd seen it, you'd stop being in favour of it.' 'It didn't alter my view. It was a horrible thing, but it was meant to be. 'In an age of DNA, establishing someone's guilt is easier and more likely to be certain than it was before. I certainly am not suggesting the execution of all murderers – only the most heinous of them.' The broadcaster, who over his long career in journalism has written extensively on the subject, went on to detail his reasoning for supporting capital punishment. The death penalty was abolished in Britain in 1965, mostly due to evolving social attitudes and several high-profile miscarriages of justice. Hitchens said: 'You must make it plain as a society that you value life above all things. The only person who can forgive a murderer is the person who's murdered, and that person is not available – we do not have the freedom to forgive on their behalf. 'Then there's deterrence – when the death penalty was suspended in this country in the late 1940s, armed crime went up during that suspension and fell again when it ended. 'There is no question that since final abolition in 1965, the amount of homicide in this country has gone up. 'What's more, the amount of serious wounding has gone up, but that doesn't show in the homicide rates because the health service has gotten so much better. 'If people see someone getting away with murder, then it makes them angry. It makes them less inclined to keep the law themselves. Poorly enforced laws make people behave worse.' Sarah Vine tacitly agreed with her co-host, adding that now, in the modern world, we have far less painful and graphic methods of execution than when capital punishment was abolished. The most common method of execution in Britain was hanging. The deeply controversial 1955 hanging of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be given the death penalty in Britain, turned the public against the method of execution and capital punishment in general. Hitchens said however that if the death penalty was reintroduced, the method of execution should be 'genuinely frightening' by design. 'The thing has to have some force', the author proclaimed. 'When I saw the lethal injection, I thought it was morally creepy. It doesn't look like an execution – it's more like a medical procedure. That's dishonest – people are pretending to be doing something that they're not.' To catch the full debate on the death penalty, listen to the latest Alas Vine & Hitchens now, wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are released every Wednesday.
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.
CBS News
08-05-2025
- CBS News
Man executed by firing squad was conscious for up to a minute after bullets missed target, lawyers say
An inmate put to death last month in South Carolina's second firing squad execution was conscious and likely in extreme pain for up to a minute after the bullets missed their target and failed to quickly stop his heart, according to a pathologist hired by the inmate's attorneys. An autopsy photo of Mikal Mahdi's torso showed only two distinct wounds from the three prison employees who volunteered for the firing squad and had live ammunition in the April 11 execution, according to the pathologist's report. It was filed Thursday with a letter to the state Supreme Court titled "notice of botched execution." Prison workers suggested to the pathologist who performed the autopsy that two bullets entered his body at 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. Consequently, the nature of the internal injuries from the gunshot wounds resulted in a more prolonged death process," said Dr. Jonathan Arden, a pathologist hired by attorneys for condemned inmates. Arden said that likely meant Mahdi took 30 to 60 seconds to lose consciousness — two to four times longer than the 15 seconds that experts including Arden and ones hired by the state predicted for a properly conducted firing squad execution. This photo provided by South Carolina Department of Corrections shows Mikal Mahdi. South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP During that time Mahdi would have suffered excruciating pain as his lungs tried to expand and move into a broken sternum and ribs, as well as from "air hunger" as the damaged lungs struggled and failed to bring in needed oxygen, Arden said. Witnesses to the execution heard Mahdi cry out as the shots were fired, groan again some 45 seconds later and let out one last low moan just before he appeared to draw his final breath at about 75 seconds. Mahdi, 42, was executed after admitting he killed Orangeburg Public Safety officer James Myers in 2004, shooting him at least eight times before burning his body. Myers' wife found him in the couple's Calhoun County shed, which had been the backdrop to their wedding 15 months earlier. Prison officials have given no indication that there were problems with Mahdi's execution. A shield law keeps many details private, including the training and methods used by the firing squad. A spokeswoman on Thursday said they were working to respond to the filing. The official autopsy did not include X-rays to allow the results to be independently verified; 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, Arden said in a report summarizing his findings. "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 David Weiss, an attorney for Mahdi who was also a witness at his death. In the official autopsy report, pathologist Dr. Bradley Marcus wrote that the reason there were only two wounds is that one could have been caused by two bullets entering the body at the same spot. Marcus said he spoke to an unnamed prison official who reported that when the three volunteer firing squad members practice, sometimes their targets end up with just one or two holes from three live rounds. Arden called that virtually unheard of in his 40 years of examining dead bodies and said Marcus told him in a conversation that the possibility was remote. The autopsy found damage in only one of the four chambers of Mahdi's heart — the right ventricle. There was extensive damage to his liver and pancreas as the bullets continued down. "The entrance wounds were at the lowest area of the chest, just above the border with the abdomen, which is an area not largely overlying the heart," Arden wrote. In their conversation Marcus also said the severe amount of liver damage was not anticipated and he "expected the entrance wounds to be higher on the chest," Arden wrote in his report. In contrast, the autopsy on Brad Sigmon, the first man killed by firing squad in the state, showed three distinct bullet wounds and his heart was obliterated, Arden said. He added that the autopsy report in that case included X-rays, adequate photos and a cursory examination of his clothes. Without X-rays or other internal scans to follow the path of the bullets through Mahdi's body, no additional light could be shed on the two-bullets-through-one-hole claim, Arden said. Bradley declined to talk about his autopsy when reached by phone Thursday morning. Weiss said he was stunned that so little was done in the autopsy even after the pathologist saw only two holes in his chest. The apparent errors in how the execution was carried out are a major problem, he asserted. Ron Kaz demonstrates outside the site of the scheduled execution of South Carolina inmate Mikal Mahdi in Columbia, S.C., Friday, April 11, 2025. David Yeazell / AP "His heart was missed, and in all likelihood only two out of three shots were fired," Weiss said. "And I think that raises incredibly difficult questions about the type of training and oversight that is going into this process." "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," Weiss said. Mahdi's body was cremated, preventing a second autopsy, Weiss said. South Carolina allows condemned inmates to choose whether to die by lethal injection, electric chair or firing squad. Sigmon's execution was the first by firing squad in 15 years anywhere in the U.S., and the fourth since 1976, with all of the others happening in Utah. The method had deep and violent roots around the world but was presented by South Carolina corrections officials as the most humane of the available options. In addition to known problems securing legitimate lethal injection drugs, autopsies have shown that lethal injection causes a rush of fluid into the lungs, and burns have been found on bodies after electrocutions. Three South Carolina inmates in the past year have chosen lethal injection, but the past two opted for the firing squad, saying they feared the other methods — autopsies have shown that lethal injection causes a rush of fluid into the lungs, and burns have been found on bodies after electrocutions. Twenty-six people remain on South Carolina's death row. Stephen Stanko, who has two death sentences for murders in Horry County and Georgetown County, has run out of appeals and likely will be scheduled to die in June.
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.
