COLUMBIA, S.C. — A second South Carolina death row inmate has asked to die by firing squad just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bullets.
Mikal Mahdi chose the firing squad Friday. His execution is scheduled for April 11.
Mahdi was convicted for killing a police officer with a gun he stole from the officer’s shed in 2004.
Mahdi had the choice of dying by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair. Mahdi is the first inmate to be executed in the state since Brad Sigmon chose to die by bullets on March 7. A doctor pronounced Sigmon dead less than three minutes after the shots were fired.
Mahdi, 41, ambushed Orangeburg public safety officer James Myers at his Calhoun County shed in July 2004 as he returned from an out-of-town birthday celebration for his wife, sister and daughter, prosecutors said.
Myers’ wife found his burned body, shot at least eight times including twice in the head, in the shed that had been the backdrop for their wedding less than 15 months earlier, authorities said.
Mahdi will be strapped in a chair 15 feet (4.6 meters) from three prison employees who volunteered to be on the firing squad. A target will be placed on his chest. Their rifles will all be loaded with a live round that shatters when it hits his rib cage.
Along with Sigmon, only three other inmates — all in Utah — have been killed by a firing squad in the past 50 years. Sigmon was the first inmate killed by bullets in the U.S. since 2010.