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U.S.|South Carolina Executes Second Inmate by Firing Squad
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/us/south-carolina-execution-firing-squad.html
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Mikal Mahdi’s execution came about a month after the first person in state history was killed in such a manner. Before that, no person had been killed by a firing squad in the United States in 15 years.
April 11, 2025, 6:37 p.m. ET
South Carolina executed another convicted murderer by firing squad on Friday night, the second such execution in the state.
The inmate, Mikal Mahdi, 41, was declared dead shortly after 6 p.m. after a firing squad shot three bullets at a target placed over his heart, the State Department of Corrections said.
A judge had ordered Mr. Mahdi, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to fatally shooting an off-duty police officer in South Carolina, to choose from three methods of execution: lethal injection, electrocution or firing squad. His lawyer, David Weiss, said that Mr. Mahdi did not want to offer a public explanation for why he chose a firing squad.
His execution came just a month after Brad Sigmon, who was convicted of beating his ex-girlfriend’s parents to death with a baseball bat in 2001, became the first inmate to be executed by firing squad execution in the state — and the first in the United States in 15 years.
Mr. Sigmon had chosen to be shot on March 7 because he had concerns about South Carolina’s lethal injection process, his lawyer said.
Polls show that a majority of Americans favor the death penalty, although many view firing squads as an archaic form of justice. But as lethal injection drugs have become harder to obtain, and have at times resulted in botched executions, several states have recently legalized firing squads as an execution method.
