Firing squad ‘botched’ execution of cop killer, experienced ‘excruciating’ pain

A South Carolina triple murderer and cop killer suffered “excruciating conscious pain” during a botched execution by firing squad last month.

The murderer, Mikal Mahdi, killed three people, including a cop, during a murder spree committed in July of 2004. Two years later, he was convicted of killing the cop, James Myers, and sentenced to death.

Ahead of his execution scheduled for April 11th of this year, he was offered a choice between dying by lethal injection, by the electric chair, or by a firing squad. He chose the latter option.

But then something stunning happened …

South Carolina’s firing squad execution of cop killer Mikal Mahdi was botched, with bullets missing his heart, prolonging his death.

Oops pic.twitter.com/2ZK3mlvlu7

— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) May 9, 2025

According to an autopsy report reviewed by NPR, the firing squad failed to hit Madhi’s heart, causing him to continue living for over a minute.

“None of the bullets hit his heart directly, as is supposed to happen during the execution,” NPR has confirmed. “Instead, the wounds caused damage to his liver and other internal organs, and allowed his heart to keep beating. Pathologists say the injuries likely caused the prisoner pain and suffering while he was still conscious.”

Ouch.

“He’s not going to die instantaneously from this,” Dr. Carl Wigren, a forensic pathologist who reviewed the autopsy results, told NPR. “I think that it took him some time to bleed out.”

Dr. Jonathan Arden, a pathologist commissioned by Mahdi’s lawyers, kept it even more blunt.

“Mr. Mahdi did experience excruciating conscious pain and suffering for about 30 to 60 seconds after he was shot,” he wrote in his own analysis. “Both the forensic medical evidence and the reported eyewitness observations of the execution corroborate that Mr. Mahdi was alive and reacting longer than was intended or expected.”

That’s a shame.

BREAKING: Lawyers for convicted cop-killer Mikal Mahdi, executed by a South Carolina firing squad, now suing; claiming it was “botched” as bullets missed his heart, resulting in a more prolonged and painful death process.

I’m @Dapper_Det and I approve of this misery. pic.twitter.com/aekElnc9rf

— Dapper Detective (@Dapper_Det) May 9, 2025

It gets better or worse, depending on how you view things.

“Mahdi, 42, cried out as the bullets hit him, and his arms flexed,” according to Jeffrey Collins of the Associated Press, who reportedly witnessed the botched execution. “A white target with the red bull’s-eye over his heart was pushed into the wound in his chest.”

“Mahdi groaned two more times about 45 seconds after that. His breaths continued for about 80 seconds before he appeared to take one final gasp. A doctor checked him for a little over a minute, and he was declared dead at 6:05 p.m., less than four minutes after the shots were fired,” Collins’s reporting from the execution continues.

Mahdi’s horrific death comes courtesy of the South Carolina Supreme Court, which ruled last year that, despite the state’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment,” death by firing squad doesn’t count because the suffering would be very limited.

“The evidence before us convinces us — though an inmate executed via the firing squad is likely to feel pain, perhaps excruciating pain — that the pain will last only ten to fifteen seconds,” the justices ruled. “Unless there is a massive botch of the execution in which each member of the firing squad simply misses the inmate’s heart.”

Unfortunately for Mahdi, most people couldn’t give any less of a damn about the “excruciating pain” he suffered on account of all the excruciating pain he forced on three families — those of victims Greg Jones, Christopher Boggs, and off-duty policeman James Edward Myers.

Case in point (*Language warning):

Sounds like his heart wasn’t in the right place

— ib (@Indian_Bronson) May 9, 2025

He only suffered for 4 minutes.

Nowhere near long enough

— See the way (@wifesthong) May 8, 2025

Kind of the same way his victims lingered in their death. Strange how that happened.

— Maggie (@Ebbie228228) May 9, 2025

So we are supposed to care that it took 65 seconds longer for this scum to die, how long did it take for the cop to die, that this scum murdered? At the end of the day the job got done, fuck ’em.

— Laura Wren (@LauraWren72) May 9, 2025

South Carolina firing squad ‘botched’ execution of cop killer Mikal Mahdi as bullets missed heart, left him alive ‘longer than was intended’

So what’s the problem? I don’t see any.

Key words = cop killer

— Brox (@BRox_56) May 9, 2025

Senior Staff Writer
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V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.

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