A Statement on the Execution of Mikal Mahdi

On April 11, 2025, the state of South Carolina executed Mikal Mahdi for murder of Christopher Boggs and Cpt. James Myers. Mikal’s execution is the second execution by firing squad in the state of South Carolina in 35 days . He is also only the 5th person to be executed in the United States by firing squad since 1976.

A Statement from Executive Director, Rev. Hillary Taylor:

"Tonight, the State of South Carolina has executed Mikal Mahdi. Mikal was not a monster that came out of nowhere: he was created by decades of our society’s neglect. As a child, Mikal should have been permanently removed from the custody of his physically and emotionally abusive father, who himself was struggling with severe mental illness. He was allowed to stay in his father’s custody, even though as early as age 9, he was hospitalized for severe depression because of self-harming threats he made at school. If Mikal had received such an intervention, he likely never would have started down the path that landed him on death row. Instead, whether because of race, socioeconomic status, or a combination of those two identities, no permanent intervention happened.

Our society continued to ignore Mikal by sentencing him to prison when his pain and hopelessness manifested in nonviolent offenses. Prisons are the last thing children struggling with mental health issues need, but they were one of the first official reactions we gave Mikal as a society. Our prisons are not built to rehabilitate: they are built to torture. Violence is the only language prisons speak. So when the prison system responded to Mikal’s needs with torturous amounts of solitary confinement and excessive brutality from corrections officers, he learned to respond in kind. 

Mikal accepted responsibility for his actions and pleaded guilty to them in court. We know that does not erase the pain he caused to the families of Christopher Boggs and Capt. James Myers. We pray for the families of these two men: for their comfort and their peace as they continue to mourn and grieve. These two men never should have died. They did not deserve the violence they experienced. But neither does anyone else. By executing Mikal today, we have also executed a son, a brother, a nephew, a friend, and a man who was no longer a danger to anyone. 

Jesus once asked a crowd in Matthew 7:9, “Who among you will give your children a stone when they ask for bread?” What we did as a society to Mikal when he asked for help was much worse. Whether in juvenile facilities or Wallens Ridge Supermax facility, responding to violence with more violence does not solve the problem of violence. Which is why the death penalty, especially death by firing squad, will not make South Carolina a safer place to live. What does it say about South Carolina that our government officials continue to say, “We want to solve the problem of gun violence! We take gun violence seriously!,” but allow gun violence to be used against citizens as a form of punishment? How are we better than the people we incarcerate for violence of the same?

The question is not whether Mikal deserved to die; the question is whether or not we deserve to kill. Considering that Black citizens only make up 25% our state’s population, yet have comprised 80% of the people executed by our state in the last 8 months, South Carolina’s criminal legal system remains entrenched in discrimination and will never be a fair arbiter of death. 

The mission of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (SCADP) is to abolish the death penalty and catalyze criminal justice reform in South Carolina.

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