Colombia, SC – A long time ago is a way to execute political terrorism or military justice. The shooting squad is scheduled to kill a prisoner in South Carolina on Friday, which is the second time that the state has carried out this method in the past five weeks.
Michal Mahdi was sentenced to death 20 years ago on charges of killing an ambush for an out -service police officer. He will be the fifth prisoner that South Carolina carried out in less than eight months, as the state will make its way through prisoners who have run out of appeal during a 13 -year -old stoppage period for the death penalty.
Related to: How to operate the shooting squad in South Carolina
Mahdi, 42, chose to die with three bullets to the heart instead of the deadly injection or the electric chair. On March 7, Brad Sejmoun was executed at the first death of the fire division in the United States 15 years ago and only the fourth since 1976. They all occurred in Utah.
The shooting band is a long -history implementation method and violence around the world. Death was used in the cold of bullets to punish the rebels and ruin in the armies, such as the border judge in the old American West and as a tool for terrorism and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
But the legislators of South Carolina saw it as the fastest and most humane way to kill a prisoner, especially with uncertainty in obtaining deadly injection drugs.
Mahdi will be the twelfth execution in the United States this year. Twenty -five prisoners were killed in nine states in 2024. Alabama and Louisiana They killed prisoners by nitrogen gas. Floridaand OklahomaArizona and Texas executed men by deadly injection, while South Carolina used all firing squad And deadly injection.
How will implementation reveal
At 6 pm on Friday, the curtain will open in the death room in Colombia prison with less than ten witnesses sitting behind bullet -resistant glass.
Mahdi will be linked to a chair. It will be a white box with the eye of Red Bull above his heart, and a doctor put it with a headset headphone. His lawyer can read the final statement of Mahdi if he has one. A prison employee will put a driver on the head of Mahdi, walk across the small room and withdraw black shades where prison staff who volunteered will be stationed in the shooting squad.
Without an audible or visual warning of the witnesses, the archers will release high -power rifles in Mahdi from 15 feet (4.6 meters), about the distance from the basketball panel to the free throw line. They will all have live bullets shattered and separated when they hit something strong, such as my chest cage.
The doctor will go out in a minute or two, to examine Mahdi and announce that he is dead.
This image shows the state’s death room in Colombia, SC, including the electric chair, the right, and the shooting band.
The Ministry of Reform at South Carolina via AP
Crime
Mahdi admitted that he had killed the public safety officer in Uranurg James Maires in 2004, and he was shot at least eight times before he burned his body. Mairz’s wife found him in the calamity of Caloon County for the couple, who was the background of their wedding 15 months ago.
The Mairez shed was a short distance across the forest from a gas station, as Mahdi tried to buy the gas using a stolen credit card and left behind a car that he had reduced in Colombia. Mahdi was arrested in Florida while he was driving a Pick Ab police truck, which did not carry the Mairez mark.
Mahdi also admitted his killing three days before Christopher Bugs, the Winston store writer in North Carolina, who was fired twice in his head while he was examining the Mahdi ID. Mahdi was sentenced to life imprisonment for this killing.
This image, presented by the Ministry of Reform in South Carolina, shows Michal Mahdi.
The Ministry of Reform at South Carolina via AP
Final appeal
The final appeal of Mahdi this week was rejected by South Carolina’s Supreme Court. His lawyers said that the original Mahdi lawyer put in a shallow case in an attempt to spare his life, which did not call relatives, teachers, or others who knew him and ignored the impact of the months he spent on solitary confinement in prison.
The defense case to spare Mahdi’s life before the judge lasted only about 30 minutes. “It did not extend even along the law Mahdi’s lawyers wrote:
Mahdi’s first memory was his father screaming his mother through a glass table and later served his son, saying that his mother was dead. Defense lawyers said that Mahdi’s father took him out of school in the fifth grade when officials suggested that he needed behavioral assistance.
Prosecutors said that Mahdi is constantly using brutality to solve his problems. As a death prisoner, stabbed a guard and hit another worker with a concrete block. Mahdi was arrested three times with the tools he could have used to escape, including a piece of sharp minerals that could be used as a knife, according to prison records.
The prosecutors wrote: “The nature of the man is violence.”
Mahdi then sent his appeal to the US Supreme Court, which was not ruled.
Crowded death room
Mahdi’s death is the end of a crowded time in the South Carolina death room. He will be the fifth prisoner who has been killed since September after the state has not had any executions since 2011. There are no other prisoners out of appeals, but many of them are close.
The state managed to restart the executions after lawmakers allowed the shooting team and approved a draft law that allows the Penobarbital suppliers to stay secretly, in addition to the exact procedures used to kill prisoners and the names of prison staff in the death teams, including the shooting of the shooting squad.
Along with the death of the Segon fire division last month, three prisoners were executed in South Carolina through the deadly injection since September.
South Carolina now has 28 guests In the row of death. Only one man was sentenced to death in the past decade.