Citing years of abuse at home and over 7,000 hours of solitary confinement in prison – nearly all of it as a teenager – attorneys for Mikal Mahdi filed a petition asking the South Carolina Supreme Court to stay Mahdi’s execution and set aside his death sentence.
David Weiss, Assistant Federal Public Defender at the Capital Habeas Unit for the Fourth Circuit, which is part of the Federal Public Defender’s Office in the Western District of North Carolina, issued the following statement on behalf of Mikal’s legal team:
“Growing up in rural Virginia, Mikal suffered years of trauma due to his father’s schizophrenia. His father was so abusive that Mikal’s mother fled when he was four. Left behind, Mikal struggled. By nine, he couldn’t read and started having suicidal thoughts and depression. Teachers tried to help, but his father withdrew him from school and subjected Mikal to ‘homeschooling’ in the form of conspiracy-filled rants and survivalist training in the woods.
As Mikal became a teenager, things got worse. After turning 14, Mikal spent almost every day of his life – 86% of it – in juvenile and adult prisons. He was suicidal and severely depressed, yet was subjected to extensive solitary confinement, which has been shown to increase serious mental health problems. In juvenile prison, Mikal endured 1,800 hours in isolation, often for minor offenses like refusing to do physical training or tearing pages out of a school book. He spent another 6,000 hours of solitary confinement in adult prison, again for often petty reasons, like refusing to tuck in his shirt or get a haircut.
Mikal also spent significant time at Wallens Ridge State Prison, a supermax facility in rural Virginia notorious for human rights abuses, brutality, and racism. At age 21, just two months after being released from these nightmarish conditions, Mikal killed two men: Christopher Boggs and Orangeburg SC Public Safety Captain James Myers. A few years after his capital trial, Mikal tragically assaulted a prison guard on death row during a failed escape attempt.
Elementary school teachers remember Mikal as an inquisitive and sensitive child. Today, he is an avid reader with diverse interests. Mikal has also finally started to heal from his childhood trauma, as shown by the fact that he has not engaged in any assaultive behavior in prison for well over a decade.
We are asking the court to take a second look at the case because Mikal’s trial lawyers told barely a fraction of his story before Mikal was sentenced to death. Pausing Mikal’s execution for a new hearing makes sense in light of what we know today – and didn’t know at the time Mikal was a teenager in prison – about the right way to care for kids recovering from trauma.”
You can learn more about Mikal’s case at www.stop-mikals-execution.com, which includes his legal filings and two short films about Mikal’s life.
