Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers, an off-duty police officer, and the murder of a convenience store employee three days earlier.
“Tonight, the state of South Carolina executed him by firing squad -- a horrifying act that belongs in the darkest chapters of history, not in a civilized society,“ defense lawyer David Weiss said in a statement. “Mikal died in full view of a system that failed him at every turn -- from childhood to his final breath.”
South Carolina gives its death row inmates a choice between lethal injection, the electric chair and the firing squad. Mahdi chose the firing squad.
A three-person squad of Department of Corrections volunteers opens fire on the condemned man, who is restrained in a chair with a hood over his head 15 feet (five meters) away.
Mahdi’s lawyers had argued that he had suffered his entire life. He was four when his mother fled her abusive husband, leaving the boy to be raised by his volatile mentally ill father, they said.
They described Mahdi as “deeply remorseful and a dramatically different person from the confused, angry and abused youth who committed the capital crimes.”
The vast majority of US executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 have been performed using lethal injection.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others -- California, Oregon and Pennsylvania -- have moratoriums in place.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced last week that federal prosecutors would seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, charged with the high-profile December 4 murder in New York of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
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