Attorneys for Mikal Mahdi have filed a petition for executive clemency with the Honorable Henry McMaster, Governor of South Carolina, seeking the commutation of Mr. Mahdi’s sentence of death to life imprisonment without parole.
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:
“We ask Governor Henry McMaster to see the complete picture. To recognize Mikal Mahdi’s humanity, deep remorse, and transformation into a thoughtful and curious person despite surviving years of childhood trauma and abuse.
Mr. Mahdi’s life is a tragic story of a child abandoned at every step. As a young child, he witnessed his father repeatedly and brutally assault his mother. At age four, Mikal’s mother fled the abuse, leaving him and his brother alone with a volatile father battling significant mental illness.
By second grade, Mikal had already developed suicidal feelings. In fifth grade, teachers tried to get Mikal the help he needed, but his dad wouldn’t allow it, instead pulling Mikal from school and subjecting him to conspiracy-laden rants and daily survivalist training in the woods. By 14 years old, Mikal would enter the prison system for committing property crimes, and basically never left. Between the ages of 14 and 21, Mikal spent over 80% of his life in prison and lived through 8,000 hours in solitary confinement, often as punishment for the most minor offenses, like refusing to tuck in his shirt. Today, prison isolation is widely recognized as torture for children.
We fully recognize the pain, suffering, and senseless loss caused by Mr. Mahdi’s crimes, but this case shows why clemency exists. Mikal’s sentencing hearing was a sham. He was sentenced to die even though his trial lawyers never explained the trauma that shaped his life and led him to commit terrible acts at only 21 years old. Now 42, Mikal is deeply remorseful and a dramatically different person from the confused, angry, and abused youth who committed the capital crimes.
We urge Governor McMaster to consider the full story of Mikal’s life. To account for the trauma, abuse, and neglect Mikal endured. To consider the scientific research showing how damaging Mikal’s time in solitary confinement was as an adolescent. And finally, to acknowledge that justice must be tempered with mercy—especially when the system has failed someone so completely as it has Mikal.”
