The case of Mikal Mahdi, who was convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to death, took a surprising turn when he escaped death after bullets missed his heart during a botched execution attempt even though he ended up dying.
Mikal Mahdi’s case has raised questions about the reliability of execution methods and the need for more stringent protocols in place to ensure that such incidents do not occur again.
Mikal Mahdi, 42 — who murdered a South Carolina police officer during a crime spree in 2004 — was shot to death by a three-person firing squad on April 11.
But an autopsy later revealed that none of the bullets hit his heart directly, and that his chest showed only two bullet wounds instead of three, according to a disturbing report by NPR.
The bullets that struck him injured his liver and other internal organs and allowed his heart to keep beating as he remained alive for roughly a minute, experts said.
Arden, who was hired by Mahdi’s lawyers to review the autopsy, added that Mahdi was “alive and reacting longer than was intended or expected.”
In July 2004, Mahdi went on a multi-state crime spree — committing carjacking, firearm robbery, and three murders, including that of 56-year-old off-duty police officer James Myers, who was shot at least eight times before his body was burned.
“He’s not going to die instantaneously from this,” said Dr. Carl Wigren, a forensic pathologist who reviewed the autopsy documents for NPR. “I think that it took him some time to bleed out.”
On May 8, lawyers for Mahdi told the South Carolina Supreme Court that the execution was “botched,” citing the state’s autopsy and a forensic report.
The constitution in South Carolina bans cruel or unusual punishment — but the state’s Supreme Court ruled last year that firing squad executions were not cruel because a prisoner would not suffer longer than 15 seconds.
The case of Mikal Mahdi serves as a reminder of the complexities and controversies surrounding capital punishment and the need for a rigorous and meticulous approach to its implementation. I guess it’s time to take a look at sentencing by deaths.
