COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Lawyers for a South Carolina inmate set to be put to death next month want to stop his execution, saying his defense’s plea for his life at his original trial “didn’t even span the length of a Law & Order episode, and was just as superficial.”
Mikal Mahdi is scheduled to die April 11 for the 2004 killing of an off-duty police officer after ambushing him in the officer’s work shed in Calhoun County and setting his body on fire after shooting him at least eight times.
Mahdi, 41, chose to plead guilty to murder, so a judge, and not a jury, decided whether he got life in prison or the death penalty.
Mahdi’s current lawyers said in an appeal Tuesday to the state Supreme Court that it appears the defense’s case to spare Mahdi’s life lasted only about 30 minutes.
After Mahdi’s family was uncooperative, they did not seek out elementary school teachers or people in the community who could have addressed Mahdi’s chaotic childhood that left him with some of the most severe trauma of depression and anger one psychologist said he had ever seen, according to the appeal.
Mahdi was the second son of a woman wed at age 16 in an arranged marriage. His family described a chaotic childhood with a father who abused his mother until she left without her children.
Mahdi’s father pulled him out of school in fifth grade and put him through paramilitary training after a school psychologist suggested he needed help with his emotions and academics after he threatened to kill himself, his lawyers said.
Mahdi spent most of his life from age 14 to 21 in prison and spent months in solitary confinement, which only made his depression and anger worse — testimony his attorneys said was not presented at his trial.
Prosecutors called 28 witnesses for Circuit Court Judge Clifton Newman to hear as he weighed whether Mahdi lived or died at his trial. The defense called two.
“In essence, Mahdi’s entire life — in this proceeding to determine whether he should live or die — was boiled down to a few short bullet points and less than a half hour of testimony,” Mahdi’s lawyers wrote.
In an earlier appeal, a state court judge rejected Mahdi’s argument his trial lawyers were ineffective. A federal court refused to take up the matter, leaving Mahdi facing execution in less than a month.
“At the very least, a basic sense of justice and fairness calls for this new information to be fully heard before Mr. Mahdi is put to death,” his lawyers wrote.
Attorneys for the state have not responded to Mahdi’s latest appeal.
Mahdi has until March 28 to decide if he wants to die by firing squad, in the electric chair or by lethal injection. He would be the fifth inmate South Carolina has executed in less than seven months.
Brad Sigmon chose to be shot to death on March 7, while lethal injection was selected by Freddie Owens on Sept. 20; Richard Moore on Nov. 1; and Marion Bowman Jr. on Jan. 31.
Mahdi shot and killed Orangeburg public safety officer James Myers in July 2004 in the middle of a stretch of crimes that stretched across four states. It started when Mahdi stole a gun and a car in Virginia. Mahdi admitted he shot and killed a store clerk in North Carolina and aimed a gun at the officer in Florida who arrested him after Myers’ death.
As he sentenced Mahdi to death, Newman said his challenge through his judicial career was to find the humanity in every defendant and temper justice with mercy.
“That sense of humanity seems not to exist in Mikal Deen Mahdi,” Newman said as he handed down the death sentence.
Mahdi’s lawyers said that was the fault of his trial attorneys, and he shouldn’t have to die because of it.
“We now know that Judge Newman simply did not have access to the information needed to reach a reliable sentencing decision,” they wrote.
