Second South Carolina Prisoner Executed by Firing Squad
A South Carolina Department of Corrections (DOC) firing squad executed state prisoner Mikal Mahdi on April 11, 2025. It was the state’s second execution conducted by shooting a prisoner to death. In the first, five weeks earlier, a DOC rifle squad gunned down prisoner Brad Sigmon, 67, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2025, p.14.]
When arrested in Florida in 2004, Mahdi, then 21, was driving an unmarked police pickup belonging to his victim, Orangeburg Public Safety Off. James Myers, 24, whose partially burned corpse was found in his shed after Mahdi fatally shot him and tried to burn the evidence.
Witnesses to Mahdi’s execution saw the white target on his chest collapse as its red bullseye was driven into his chest by bullets. The prisoner cried out, followed by two groans about 45 seconds later and then his last breath about 35 seconds after that. He had chosen the firing squad over the electric chair and lethal injection.
His killing was the fifth since executions resumed in September 2024, following a 13-year hiatus that ended after state lawmakers passed a measure shielding the identity of lethal drug manufacturers and added the firing squad option.
Source: AP News
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