A convicted cop killer who grew to become the second dying row inmate in South Carolina to die by firing squad chomped on a ribeye steak, mushroom risotto, broccoli, collard greens and cheesecake earlier than he was executed on Friday evening.
Mikal Mahdi, 42, had three slugs fired into his coronary heart by educated correctional volunteers at Broad River Correctional Establishment in Columbia and was pronounced lifeless at 6:05 p.m. for the ambush killing of Orangeburg Public Security Captain James Myers in 2004.
Mahdi, who washed down his hearty final meal with a candy tea, didn’t make a closing assertion earlier than his execution, based on the South Carolina Division of Corrections.
Mahdi was then hooded and strapped to a metallic chair that sat on prime of a catch basin contained in the jail’s dying chamber with a white goal and purple bullseye positioned over his chest.
Three members from the state’s corrections division stood behind a wall 15 ft away and concurrently opened fireplace by way of openings within the partition at 6:01 p.m. Every shooter fired one spherical, with Mahdi flexing his arms and crying out because the bullets struck him.
The bullseye was additionally pushed into the wound in his chest.
Mahdi continued to groan and take deep breaths for about two minutes earlier than taking one closing gasp – with a health care provider affirming his dying 4 minutes after the pictures rang out.
9 witnesses have been seated in a room separated from the chamber by bulletproof glass.
One member of the sufferer’s household, Mahdi’s lawyer, a consultant from the First Circuit Solicitor’s Workplace and the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Workplace and three reporters have been amongst those that witnessed Mahdi’s closing moments.
Mahdi, who personally selected the violent punishment over the electrical chair or deadly injection, grew to become the second dying row inmate executed by the Palmetto State’s new firing squad after double assassin Brad Sigmon grew to become the primary particular person in 15 years be shot to dying final month.
“Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi had chosen the lesser of the three evils,” his lawyer, David Weiss mentioned in a press release after the execution, which he described as a “horrifying act” that doesn’t belong in a “civilized society.”
“Mikal chose the firing squad instead of being burned and mutilated in the electric chair, or suffering the lingering death on the lethal injection gurney.”
Mahdi was sentenced to dying after he confessed to capturing Myers a minimum of eight instances after which burning his physique in a shed that had been the backdrop of the officer’s marriage ceremony simply 15 months earlier.
The heinous act unfolded three days after he killed Christopher Boggs, a comfort retailer clerk in North Carolina. Mahdi shot the clerk twice within the head.
He was later arrested in Florida whereas driving the cop’s unmarked police pickup truck.
Final-minute appeals to spare Mahdi’s life have been rejected this week by each the US and South Carolina Supreme Courts. His protection group argued that his authentic attorneys made little effort to avoid wasting his life and did not name on those that knew him to testify after the prosecution known as 28 witnesses.
Republican Gov. Henry McMaster additionally denied clemency.
5 inmates have been put to dying within the state since September – when executions resumed following a 13-year pause.
Twenty-six inmates stay on dying row.
With Put up wires
