On Friday, a South Carolina death row inmate chose execution by fire squad, just 5 weeks after the state of Carolina carried out its first execution by bullets. Mikal Mahdi, who has recently pleaded guilty to murder for killing a police officer in 2004, is scheduled to be executed on April 11.
Mahdi, who is 41, had the choice of dying by lethal injection, the electric chair or firing squad. He chose the firing squad of South Carolina. He will be the first inmate to be executed in South Carolina since Brad Sigmon. On March 7 Sigmon chose to be shot to death. A doctor pronounced Brad Sigmon dead in less than 3 minutes after three bullets tore into his heart.
South Carolina is about to execute their SECOND death row inmate by FIRING SQUAD! How this Bastard gets to potentially live free 20 years after this murder is sickening! https://t.co/jaUnRtCI8K
— The Hard Black Truth 🇺🇲 (@MrBlack27073911) March 31, 2025
“Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils,” one of Mahdi’s lawyers, David Weiss, said in a statement. “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.”
Mikal Mahdi ambushed James Myers, the Orangeburg public safety officer in the officer’s home in Calhoun County in July 2004. James had just come back from an out-of-town birthday celebration for his wife, sister and daughter, prosecutors said.
James’ wife found his burned body, shot almost eight times including two times in his head. His body was found in the shed that had been the backdrop for their wedding less than 15 months earlier, authorities stated.
As per his choice of execution, Mahdi will be strapped to a chair which will be placed 15 feet from three prison employees who have volunteered to be on the firing squad. The target will be placed on his chest, and the employees’ rifles will be loaded with a live round that will shatter when it hits his rib cage.
Apart from Brad Sigmon, only 3 other US inmates have been killed by a firing squad in the past 50 years and all of them in Utah. Sigmon was the first inmate killed by bullets in the US since 2010.
Execution by firing squad has recently become an option in the state for inmates who choose firing over the electric chair. Witnesses, such as lawyers and reporters will be sitting behind the bullet-resistant glass and witness the inmate’s right profile, according to the S.C. Department of Corrections. The firing squad and rifles however will not be visible to the witnesses.
On the other hand, the South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty have spoken out against Mikal Mahdi’s scheduled execution.
In a statement Rev. Hillary Taylor, an ordained UMC minister, said:
“Only one week after a devastating execution by firing squad, SC state officials are issuing the third death warrant in three months. This time, the warrant is for Mikal Mahdi: someone who experienced profound abuse and neglect as a child from family members and prison environments. This is no accident: this is who the death penalty targets. Instead of intervening and helping Mikal find healing and stability, our legal system created more trauma in his life. He was subjected to verbal abuse, physical abuse, and horrific amounts of isolation. If the state of South Carolina truly cared about being pro-life, our officials would be focusing on making sure all children grew up in safe, loving, abuse-free environments. Instead, our officials are more focused on preserving their political power, which is all the death penalty does. Executing Mikal will not enhance public safety in South Carolina. It will only ensure that the violence enacted upon children and teenagers continues.”
South Carolina seeks to restart executions with electric chair, firing squad; says painless death not required https://t.co/8JwUT4XEk2
— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 7, 2024
After Mikal Mahdi pleaded guilty to murder, Judge Clifton Newman stated he “sentenced the young man to death because a sense of humanity,” he tried to find in every defendant “seemed not to exist in Mahdi.”
Prosecutors have however responded to the claim of a poor defense and 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.” The 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. “The nature of the man is violence,” prosecutors wrote.
