Second South Carolina inmate chooses execution by firing squad

A second South Carolina death row inmate has chosen execution by firing squad.

Mikal Mahdi, 41, will be put to death on April 11 after pleading guilty to murder for killing a police officer in 2004.

“Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils,” one of his 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.”

Brad Sigmon chose to be shot to death in South Carolina on March 7, becoming the first prisoner executed by firing squad in the U.S. in 15 years. A doctor pronounced Sigmon dead less than three minutes after three bullets struck him.

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Only three other inmates in the U.S. have been executed by this method since 1976, and all were in Utah.

Mahdi stole a gun and a car in Virginia on July 14, 2004, when he was 21, arrest records show. The next day, he shot and killed a North Carolina store clerk as the clerk was checking his identification. A couple of days later, he carjacked someone at an intersection in Columbia, South Carolina.

On July 18, 2004, while on the run after those crimes, Mahdi hid in Orangeburg, South Carolina, public safety officer James Myers’ shed. Mahdi ambushed Meyers when the officer returned from a birthday celebration for his wife, sister and daughter, prosecutors said.

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South Carolina electric chair and firing squad chair

Myers, 56, was shot eight or nine times, including twice in the head after falling to the ground. A pathologist testified that at least seven of the shots would have been fatal.

Mahdi then set Myers’ body on fire and ran away. Myers’ wife discovered her husband’s dead body in the shed, which they had used for the backdrop of their wedding.