A South Carolina cop killer refused to offer remorse for his crimes and ignored onlookers before he was shot to death by a prison firing squad.
Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed by a volunteer three person firing squad for the murder of police captain James Myers, 56, just after 6pm on Friday after opting for the very rare execution method over lethal injection or the electric chair.
The cop killer made no final statement before his death and avoided looking at the nine witnesses in the room behind bulletproof glass.
Mahdi cried out from beneath a hood over his head as the three bullets to the heart hit him and his arms flexed. A red bullseye that was placed over his heart was pushed into the bullet wound in his chest.
He groaned about 45 seconds afterward and his breaths continued for around 80 seconds before he took his final gasp.
A doctor declared the inmate dead at 6.05pm, just four minutes after the shots were fired.
Captain Myers, Mahdi’s victim, was shot nine times before his body was set on fire.
The death row inmate also plead guilty to murdering a convenience store clerk, three days before he killed Myers.
Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed by a volunteer three person firing squad just after 6pm on Friday. The cop killer made no final statement before his death and avoided looking at the nine witnesses in the room behind bulletproof glass
Mahdi, with a hood over his head, cried out as the three bullets to the heart hit him and his arms flexed. He groaned about 45 seconds afterward and his breaths continued for around 80 seconds before he took his final gasp. A doctor declared the inmate dead at 6.05pm
Mahdi chose the method because he believed the electric chair would ‘cook him alive’ and feared that death by lethal injection would send fluid into his lungs and drown him, according to his lawyers, The Mirror reported.
He was the fifth prisoner who has been executed by firing squad in the US since 1976, the other four taking place in Utah.
Mahdi also marks the fifth inmate to have been executed in South Carolina in less than eight months.
His attorney, who witnessed the execution, described it as ‘horrifying’ and told USA Today that such an act ‘belongs in the darkest chapters of history, not in a civilized society.’
South Carolina lawmakers, however, have said that the method is the quickest and most humane way to kill a death row inmate.
In 2004, Mahdi admitted to killing Myers as prosecutors told jurors in his trial that he was the ‘epitome of evil.’
‘His heart and mind are full of hate and malice,’ prosecutor David Pascoe said.
Myers’ wife, Amy Tripp Myers, found his body in a shed on their property, and the same spot where the two had been married.
In 2004, Mahdi admitted to killing 56-year-old police captain James Myers
She testified: ‘I found the love of my life, my soulmate, the partner that my life revolved around, lifeless, lying in a pool of blood and his body burned by someone who didn’t even know him.’
‘As I screamed those blood-curdling screams of pain and anguish, I instantly knew that the man whom I had just spent the last six years of my life dreaming of a beautiful future was gone like a vapor.’
The inmate’s defense lawyers, however, argued that he should be spared from execution because he never got ‘desperately needed’ mental health care as a child.
Mahdi reportedly had a history of threatening suicide and endured ‘extraordinary abuse and trauma,’ USA Today reported.
He was just 21 years old in 2004 when he stole a neighbor’s gun and station wagon from Virginia, Mahdi’s home state, and went to North Carolina.
It was there that he shot the store clerk, Christopher Jason Boggs, before heading to South Carolina and carjacked a man in Columbia.
He drove to a gas station and spent 45 minutes with a credit card that was being rejected as he attempted to buy gas. A clerk called police, causing Mahdi to flee and abandon the car.
The gas station was just a short way through the woods from Myers farm, where he escaped to and hid in Myers’ shed.
Mahdi wrote in a letter shared by his attorneys which said: ‘I’m guilty as hell… What I’ve done is irredeemable’
Mahdi also marks the fifth inmate to have been executed in South Carolina in less than eight months. South Carolina lawmakers, however, have said that the method is the quickest and most humane way to kill a death row inmate
Mahdi stole Myers’ police pickup truck and was arrested in Florida.
He was sentenced to life in prison for the killing of the store clerk.
Mahdi wrote in a letter shared by his attorneys which said: ‘I’m guilty as hell… What I’ve done is irredeemable.’
His final appeal was rejected this week by both the US and South Carolina Supreme Courts.
As a death row inmate, Mahdi stabbed a guard and hit another with a concrete block. He was caught three times with tools presumed to be for an escape attempt, including a sharpened piece of metal that was fashioned like a knife.
‘The nature of the man is violence,’ prosecutors said at his appeal.
South Carolina now has 28 inmates on death row, with just one man sentenced in the past decade. Mahdi marks the 12th execution so far this year.
