Exclusive: As a South Carolina death row man prepares to die by firing a squad, his lawyers argue that it's not a matter of guilt but a matter of “appropriate punishment” as he tries to stop his client's execution.
Mikal Mahdi, 42, is scheduled to be executed at 6pm on Friday in a Columbia prison after pleading guilty to the 2004 murder of an off-duty police officer.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Mahdi's lawyer David Weiss said that his client's cases raise questions about “appropriate punishment” given the struggles and growth of prisoners' lives as people in the years since the crime was committed.
“It's a question of what is the right punishment given the life experiences of a person, everything they've gone through, and why things are really tragic crimes happening, it's a matter of what is the right punishment,” Weiss said. “But with few exceptions, what you're seeing is that when a tragic crime was committed, the person who committed them went through an incredibly difficult life experience that led them down that path. That's what happened here.”
Second South Carolina prisoner chooses to execute by firing squads
Mikal Mahdi, 42, is scheduled to be executed at Colombia's prison at 6pm on Friday. (Correctal Department via the Associated Press, South Carolina)
Mahdi is now “a lot different person” than he was when he committed a capital crime at age 21, Weiss said his client was a “confused, angry kid” at the time, where he had grown and matured much. Weiss explained that Mahdi is “a intelligent and thoughtful person who spends as much time as he can read and learn about the world.”
Weiss says that Mahdi accepts responsibility for what he has done and knows what he has done is horrible. He said he understands that Mahdi must be punished for his crimes and that he could be executed.
However, Weiss warned that if South Carolina executes the execution, it would kill someone “are very different from the person who committed the capital crime in the first place.”
Mahdi was the fifth person to be executed in the US for firing a squad since 1976, with the first three taking place in Utah. Sigmon was the first person to be executed by firing a squad for the first time in 15 years.
Given the fatal injection, electric shock and shooting squad choice, Weiss said Mahdi chose three less evils. He pointed out that lethal injections were previously believed to be more humane before being deemed “severe torture,” and that electric shocks are cruel, as they are “cooking.”[ed] From the inside. ”
“If the execution is done, they fire three powerful rifles into the client's chest,” Weiss said. “It's scary to see him go through. It's scary to have to witness everyone involved, from the legal team to the witnesses to the prison staff who have to do it.”
In the death room, Mahdi is tied to a chair, with a hood on his head and a target on his heart. The three shooters fire at him through a small opening about 15 feet away.
Bo King, a lawyer representing Sigmon, detailed what he witnessed when his client died on March 7th.
“Looking at how he was restrained, he was tied to a chair with his arms fully pulled back.
South Carolina sets the date for its fifth run in under 7 months
Brad Sigmon was executed in March to betray the parents of a marginalized girlfriend in Greenville County in 2001. (Correctal Department via the Associated Press, South Carolina)
“What keeps me with and continues to bother me is that he responds after he's shot, especially seeing his right arm pull so desperately on the strap that it ties to the chair,” he continued. “And all the muscles in his arm popped out, and it looked like anatomical pictures. He seemed to pull his arm freely and try desperately to cover the hole in his chest.”
King said he remembered seeing the wound open in the middle of Sigmon's chest.
“It's a difficult sight to reconcile in real time,” he said. “You see it happening. You're thinking, I just saw that there was a hole in that person.”
King also explained that he believes that bringing someone together to kill someone is inhumane, stressing that “the amount of damage I have done to Brad's body is beyond what I think.”
Three other inmates have been killed in South Carolina since the state resumed executions in September. Freddie Owens on September 20th, Richard Moore on November 1st, and Marion Bowman Jr. on January 31st, all died from fatal injections. Sigmon chose the shooting squad due to concerns about the long-term suffering he faced when three other inmates were killed with a fatal injection, King said.
In Mahdi's case, Weiss expressed concern that his client would be executed “even though he had never received a fair trial that the Constitution should guarantee.”
“All the questions at his trial were what punishment he deserved? To make a reasonable decision about it, the judge had to give all the information about who Mikal was and what he went through in his life,” Weiss explained.
Earlier this week, the South Carolina Supreme Court refused a final appeal from Mahdi's lawyers. His lawyers alleged that his former lawyer had filed poor lawsuits in attempting to save his life and failed to call on relatives, teachers or others who know him in his ruling defense, but the state Supreme Court held that many of these same arguments were made on previous failed appeals.
During his trial, Mahdi's lawyer said their client was the second son of a woman who was married in an arranged marriage at the age of 16. His family did not testify about abuse or mental illness, but described his confused childhood.
Weiss told Fox News Digital that the judge who ruled had little information given, and that Mahdi's defense was called a single witness who testified for a few minutes, giving a broad outline of Mahdi's “very traumatic childhood” that expanded when he was an infant and was extended throughout his childhood.
“When he needed additional support at school, the teacher tried to provide it, but his father expelled him from school because his suicidal feelings and his suicide feelings and things were spiraled in juvenile prison system for a rather small crime, instead of allowing him to gain that support for his recession, he spent thousands of hours in solitary confinement, like a child,” Weiss said.
As early as a second year, Mahdi suffered from mental despair and discussed self-harm. By the time he was a teenager he had a criminal history. He spent several weeks in solitary confinement after being convicted of destroying, attacking and attacking Virginia police officers.
“We know today that Mikal wasn't grateful at the time when he was in the system. “And the judge who decided what sentence Mikal should have said little about his story.”
Convicted double murderer executed by firing a squad in South Carolina
This photo, provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections, shows the death room in the state of Columbia. (South Carolina Department of Corrections/AP)
Weiss added: “That's the real injustice here, and that's the real rage here.”
Mahdi stole a gun and a car in Virginia on July 14, 2004, arrest records show. The next day he shot and killed a store clerk in a North Carolina store as the clerk confirmed his identity. A few days later, he carjacked someone at the intersection of Columbia, South Carolina.
On July 18, 2004, during the run after these crimes, Mahdi hid in a shed in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Public Sheriff James Meyers. According to prosecutors, Mahdi ambushed Myers when he returned from a birthday celebration for his wife, sisters and daughter.
Myers, 56, was shot eight or nine times, and twice in his head after falling to the ground. The pathologist testified that at least seven shots were fatal.
Mahdi then burned Myers' body and escaped. Myers' wife discovers her husband's body in the shed he used as the background of their wedding.
On July 21, 2004, Mahdi was Detained In Florida. When one of the officers involved in his arrest learned what he wanted in South Carolina, he thanked Mahdi for not shooting him. Mahdi said the only reason he didn't do that was because he was skeptical that he could successfully shoot two officers and their K-9s and escape.
While behind the bar, Mahdi was caught three times with a tool he could use to escape. One was an Allen wrench and the other was a homemade handcuff key, including one found under his tongue at his trial.
In the death line, Mahdi stabs a security guard and attacks another worker with a block of concrete. Three times, prison staff discovered dense metal in their cells that could be used as a knife.
After he pleaded guilty to the murder, Mahdi was sentenced by Judge Clifton Newman. Clifton Newman told the Post and Courier at the time that he wasn't sure if he believed in the death penalty, but said the incident was bigger than his belief.
“My challenge and my commitment throughout my career in judicial life was to temper justice with mercy and seek to find the human race of all the accused I declare,” Newman said when handing over Mahdi's punishment. “That human sense doesn't seem to exist in Mikal Dean Mahdi.”
South Carolina resumed executions in September after being partially suspended by a state that made it difficult to obtain fatal injection drugs due to concerns that it had to disclose that it had sold the drug to state officials after being one of the busiest in execution.
The room where prisoners are executed in Columbus, South Carolina. (Correctal Department via the Associated Press, South Carolina)
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State Legislature It then passed a Shield Act that allowed authorities to keep deadly injectable drug suppliers private. Congress also approved the shooting squad as another method of execution for difficult drug acquisition.
South Carolina has executed 47 prisoners since the death penalty was resumed in the United States in 1976. In the early 2000s, the state carried out an average of three executions a year. Only nine states have killed more prisoners.
If Mahdi ends a legal appeal that involves petitioning the US Supreme Court to consider the issue of the state high court's ruling, his only remaining option is for Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to reduce his sentence without parole. However, the governor of South Carolina has not granted tolerance in the 49 years since the death penalty resumed in the United States.
“I think Governor McMaster has an opportunity to change that, and he should change that,” Weiss said.
A spokesman for McMaster's Office confirmed to Fox News Digital that the governor had received a petition from Mahdi's lawyers for leniency.
“He will consider the petition and consider it carefully, as the governor has done before,” the spokesman said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the South Carolina Department of Corrections for comment.
