South Carolina’s execution chamber. (Provided/SC Department of Corrections)
COLUMBIA — Attorneys for inmate Mikal Mahdi are asking the state Supreme Court to halt his upcoming execution to consider the influence his traumatic childhood had on his crimes, according to a petition filed Tuesday.
Mahdi’s execution is scheduled for 6 p.m. April 11. The now-41-year-old was sentenced to death in 2006 after pleading guilty to shooting and killing a gas station clerk in North Carolina, then killing a police officer with his own rifle in South Carolina as part of a multi-state crime spree, according to court records.
Mahdi was arrested in Satellite Beach, Florida, on July 21, 2004, following a nationwide manhunt.
If Mahdi’s execution goes forward, he will be the fifth man put to death in the state since executions resumed last September, following an unintended 13-year hiatus.
During Mahdi’s initial trial, his attorneys “put on a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ defense to the death penalty,” the petition reads.
The single witness who talked about Mahdi’s past “barely scratched the surface of Mahdi’s tumultuous childhood and teenage years,” it continues.
As a child, growing up in Lawrenceville, Virginia, Mahdi was “quiet, affectionate, thoughtful and creative,” his current attorneys wrote. Teachers recalled him as a bright, artistic child who warmed up with some patience and trust, according to the petition.
When Mahdi was 4 years old, his mother left because of his father’s abuse, but Mahdi’s father told him she had abandoned him and later died. At age 8, Mahdi saw his father kidnap his mother at gunpoint and try to kill her, according to the petition.
Mahdi struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts from the age of 9, his attorneys claimed. His father sent him to live with an aunt and uncle in Baltimore, who eventually sent Mahdi back to his father at Mahdi’s request, according to the petition.
“My life would’ve turned out completely different if I would’ve stayed in Baltimore,” Mahdi said in a video provided by his attorneys. “But that is a whole lot of could-a, would-a, should-a.”
When Mahdi continued showing behavioral issues in school, his father pulled him out of school and “subjected him to daily survivalist training” instead of adequate homeschooling, the petition reads.
5th SC death row inmate scheduled for execution. Another receives a pause.
Mahdi first entered the juvenile justice system at age 14 for committing property crimes. From then on, he spent most of his life in jail environments, getting out for months at a time before returning to juvenile detention and, later, adult prison, according to the petition.
Much of that time was spent in solitary confinement, the legal filing continues. Between the ages of 18 and 21, Mahdi spent more than 6,000 hours in solitary confinement, according to the filing.
“None of this information is intended to minimize the harm that Mahdi caused through his violent acts as a 21-year-old,” the petition reads. “But with such a criminal record, one might expect that Mikal Mahdi was out of control his entire life. The opposite is true.”
Mahdi had been out of prison for about two months when he stole a car and a gun in his hometown of Lawrenceville, Virginia, and fled south.
He shot gas station clerk Christopher Boggs point-blank in the head while buying a beer in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, then continued on to South Carolina.
After carjacking a driver in Columbia, Mahdi drove to Calhoun County. After stopping at a gas station there, he ran on foot from a suspicious attendant and hid out in the workshop of Capt. James Myers, an Orangeburg Public Safety officer who lived in the adjoining rural county, according to court documents.
When Myers returned home on July 18, 2004, Mahdi shot him nine times with his own rifle, then lit his body on fire and stole his police truck, fleeing to Florida, where he was arrested three days later, according to court documents.
An appeals court heard similar arguments in 2011, his attorneys acknowledged.
But research has developed since then, showing that serious trauma at a young age, like what Mahdi experienced in his childhood, can affect a person’s brain development, including increasing their likelihood to commit violent crimes, according to the petition.
Psychologists have also warned that solitary confinement can exacerbate existing mental health problems in young people, according to the petition.
“That evidence will show that Mikal Mahdi is not an irredeemable person who deserves to be executed, but one who started out as a promising child before extraordinary trauma knocked him far off course,” the petition reads.
More recent research has suggested that serious trauma at a young age, like what Mahdi experienced in his childhood, can affect a person’s brain development, Mahdi’s attorneys said in the petition.
The amount of trauma Mahdi experienced as a child was “almost unheard of,” one psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Woodland, told Mahdi’s attorneys. Many children with tumultuous childhoods have a strong adult figure they can lean on, but Mahdi had no stable adults in his life, Woodland said.
“He just did not have a shot,” Woodland said in a video released by Mahdi’s attorneys.
Judge Clifton Newman, who sentenced Mahdi to death, heard none of this information, despite teachers, family friends and the former local sheriff being willing to testify. Without any family members or community members testifying, Newman could “reasonably conclude that Mikal was so irredeemable that nobody from his life was willing to speak up for him,” the petition reads.
What Newman did hear “didn’t even span the length of a Law & Order episode, and was just as superficial,” the petition continues.
“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,” his attorneys wrote.
By law, Mahdi has until Friday, March 28, to select his execution method, unless the state’s high court gives him a reprieve before then. The justices have declined requests to suspend the previous four executions since September to reconsider their death sentences.