Condemned inmate Mikal Mahdi today chose to be executed by the state of South Carolina by a firing squad on April 11, 2025. If his execution proceeds, Mahdi will be the second South Carolina inmate to be executed via this method. The state Legislature authorized the use of firing squads for capital punishment in 2021.
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:
“Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils. Mikal chose the firing squad instead of being burned and mutilated in the electric chair, or suffering a lingering death on the lethal injection gurney.
When we think of Mikal choosing his method of execution, we’re reminded of the tormented child who, at nine years old, told his teacher that he wanted to shoot himself. Or, on another occasion, to electrocute himself. Or, another time, to hang himself.
Mikal desperately needed mental health care. Instead, he languished in juvenile prison, where he spent thousands of hours in solitary confinement. We now know that punitive isolation is deeply damaging to children. Mikal was particularly vulnerable, given the extraordinary abuse and trauma he had already endured. But the judge who sentenced Mikal to death knew almost none of this.
Before Mikal committed these tragic murders, he was a child in desperate need of care and support. We will continue to fight for the child Mikal was and the man he is today. Executing Mikal on this record would ignore the many ways we failed him in favor of one final injustice.”
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.
