South Carolina | Man who ambushed off-duty cop to face firing squad in second execution of its kind

Mikal Mahdi, 48, who was found guilty of killing an off-duty police officer and a convenience store worker, is the second inmate scheduled to executed by South Carolina's new firing squad

A murderer who ambushed and shot an off duty police officer eight times before burning his body in a killing spree is set to become the second person to die by firing squad.

South Carolina's highest court has rejected the last major appeal from Mikal Mahdi, 41, who is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6pm on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.

Mahdi's lawyers said his original lawyers put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

But the state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, ruled that many of those arguments were made in earlier unsuccessful appeals and refused to stop Friday's scheduled execution so further hearings could be held. Mahdi, who admitted killing an off-duty police officer in an ambush at the officer's shed in Calhoun County, is the fifth person set to be executed in the state in just eight months.

All made final appeals to the state Supreme Court but all were rejected. Mahdi has one more opportunity to live, by asking Republican Governor Henry McMaster to reduce his sentence to life in prison without parole just minutes before his scheduled execution time.

But no South Carolina governor has offered clemency in the 47 executions carried out in the state since the death penalty resumed in the US in 1976. Mahdi, 41, was convicted of killing Orangeburg Public Safety officer James Myers in 2004, shooting him at least eight times, then burning his body.

No South Carolina governor has offered clemency in the 47 executions carried out in the state since the death penalty resumed in the US in 1976

Myers' wife found him in the shed, which had been the backdrop to their wedding 15 months earlier. Myers' shed was a short distance through the woods from a gas station where Mahdi tried but failed to buy gas with a stolen credit card and left behind a vehicle he had carjacked in Columbia.

Mahdi was arrested afterward in Florida while driving Myers' unmarked police pickup truck. He also admitted to the killing three days earlier of Christopher Biggs, a North Carolina convenience store worker who was shot twice in the head as he checked Mahdi's ID.

Mahdi was sentenced to life in prison for that killing. Mahdi pleaded guilty to killing Myers, leaving a judge under South Carolina law to decide if he would be sentenced to death or life without parole.

Prosecutors called 28 witnesses for Circuit Court Judge Clifton Newman to hear. The defense called two, according to Mahdi's appeal. The defense's case to spare Mahdi's life lasted only about 30 minutes. It "didn't even span the length of a Law & Order episode, and was just as superficial," Mahdi's lawyers wrote.

Prosecutors 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. A 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.

As a prisoner, Mahdi has been caught three times with tools he could have used to escape, including a piece of sharpened metal that could be used as a knife, according to prison records. While he was on death row, he stabbed a guard and hit another worker with a concrete block, the records show. "The nature of the man is violence," prosecutors wrote.

Mahdi is to be the second inmate executed by South Carolina's new firing squad after Brad Sigmon chose to die that way last month. The firing squad is an execution method with a long and violent history in the U.S. and around the world. .

Before Sigmon's execution last month, only three other prisoners in the U.S. had been executed by firing squad in the past 50 years. All were in Utah, most recently Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.

Three prison employees who volunteer for the role will fire high-powered rifles at Mahdi from 15 feet (about 4.5 meters) away, aiming for a target on his heart. Mahdi also could have chosen the electric chair or lethal injection.

Source: mirror.co.uk, Joseph Gamp, April 8, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Comments

China executes 11 members of gang who ran billion-dollar criminal empire in Myanmar

China has executed 11 members of the notorious Ming family criminal gang, who ran mafia-like scam centers in Myanmar and killed workers who tried to escape, Chinese state media reported on Thursday. The Ming family was one of the so-called 4 families of northern Myanmar — crime syndicates accused of running hundreds of compounds dealing in internet fraud, prostitution and drug production, and whose members held prominent positions in the local government and militia aligned with Myanmar’s ruling junta.

China executes another four members of powerful Myanmar-based crime family

China has executed another four members of a powerful Myanmar-based crime family that oversaw 41 pig butchering scam* compounds across Southeast Asia. The executed individuals were members of the Bai family, a particularly powerful gang that ruled the Laukkai district and helped transform it into a hub for casinos, trafficking, scam compounds, and prostitution. China’s Supreme People’s Court approved the executions after 21 members were charged with homicide, kidnapping, extortion, operating a fraudulent casino, organizing illegal border crossings, and forced prostitution. The court said the Bai family made over $4 billion across its enterprise and killed six Chinese citizens.

Georgia parole board suspends scheduled execution of Cobb County death row prisoner

The execution of a Georgia man scheduled for Wednesday has been suspended as the State Board of Pardons and Paroles considers a clemency application. Stacey Humphreys, 52, would have been the state's first execution in 2025. As of December 16, 2025, Georgia has carried out zero executions in 2025. The state last executed an inmate in January 2020, followed by a pause due to COVID-19. Executions resumed in 2024, but none have occurred this year until now. Humphreys had been sentenced to death for the 2003 killings of 33-year-old Cyndi Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown, who were fatally shot at the real estate office where they worked.

Oklahoma board recommends clemency for inmate set to be executed next week

A voting board in Oklahoma decided Wednesday to recommend clemency for Tremane Wood, a death row inmate who is scheduled to receive a lethal injection next week at the state penitentiary in McAlester. Wood, 46, faces execution for his conviction in the 2001 murder of Ronnie Wipf, a migrant farmworker, at an Oklahoma City hotel on New Year's Eve, court records show. The recommendation was decided in a 3-2 vote by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, consisting of five members appointed by either the governor or the state's top judicial official, according to CBS News affiliate KWTV. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Sitt will consider the recommendation as he weighs whether to grant or deny Wood's clemency request, which would mean sparing him from execution and reducing his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Florida | Man convicted of leaving girl to be eaten by gators avoids death penalty

After about 4 hours of deliberations, jurors on Friday recommended Harrel Braddy should be sentenced to life in prison for the 1998 killing of 5-year-old Quantisha Maycock. A South Florida man who dropped off a 5-year-old child in the Everglades to be eaten alive by gators nearly 3 decades ago was given a second chance at life as jurors recommended he should spend the rest of his life behind bars instead of being sent to death row. After about four hours of deliberations, jurors on Friday recommended Harrel Braddy should be sentenced to life in prison for the 1998 killing of 5-year-old Quantisha Maycock.

Federal Judge Rules Out Death Penalty for Luigi Mangione in UnitedHealth CEO Killing

NEW YORK — A federal judge has dismissed two charges against Luigi Mangione, the man accused of assassinating UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, effectively removing the possibility of the death penalty in the high-profile case. U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett ruled Friday that the murder charge through use of a firearm — the only count that could have carried a capital sentence — was legally incompatible with the remaining interstate stalking charges against Mangione.

California | Convicted killer Scott Peterson keeps swinging in court — but expert says he’s not going anywhere but his cell

More than two decades after Laci Peterson vanished from her Modesto, California, home, the murder case that captivated the nation continues to draw legal challenges, public debate and renewed attention. As the year comes to a close, Scott Peterson, convicted in 2004 of murdering his pregnant wife and their unborn son Conner, remains behind bars, serving life without the possibility of parole. His wife disappeared on Christmas Eve in 2002, and a few months later, the remains of Laci and Conner were found in the San Francisco Bay.

Florida's second execution of 2026 scheduled for February

Florida’s second execution of 2026, a man convicted of killing a grocery story owner, will take place in February. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant Jan. 23 for Melvin Trotter, 65, to die by lethal injection Feb. 24. Florida's first execution will take place just a few weeks earlier when Ronald Palmer Heath is set to die Feb. 10. Trotter was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1987 for strangling and stabbing Virgie Langford a year earlier in Palmetto.

The US reporter who has witnessed 14 executions: ‘People need to know what it looks like’

South Carolina-based journalist Jeffrey Collins observed back-to-back executions in 2025 after the state revived the death penalty following a 13-year pause Jeffrey Collins has watched 14 men draw their final breaths. Over 25 years at the Associated Press, the South Carolina-based journalist has repeatedly served as an observer inside the state’s execution chamber, watching from feet away as prison officials kill men who were sentenced to capital punishment. South Carolina has recently kept him unusually busy, with seven back-to-back executions in 14 months.

Somalia executes woman convicted of abusing, killing 14-year-old domestic worker

Mogadishu (HOL) — Puntland authorities on Tuesday executed a woman convicted of murdering a 14-year-old girl after the victim’s family chose retributive justice under Islamic law, marking a rare application of the death penalty against a woman in the semi-autonomous region. The execution was carried out in Galkacyo, a divided city in central Somalia, after courts found Hodan Mohamud guilty of killing Sabirin Saylaan Abdille, a minor who had been working as a domestic helper. Officials said the sentence was imposed under qisas , an Islamic legal principle that allows the family of a murder victim to demand the execution of the perpetrator instead of accepting financial compensation.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog