South Carolina 'sharp shooters' miss heart during firing squad execution

The wounds were on the lowest area of the chest, near the abdomen, and the bullets had a “downward” trajectory mostly missing the heart

A South Carolina firing squad botched the execution of Mikal Mahdi last month, with shooters missing the target area on the man’s heart, causing him to suffer a prolonged death, according to autopsy records and his attorneys, reported The Guardian.

Mahdi, 42, was shot dead by corrections employees last month in the second firing squad execution this year in South Carolina. The state has aggressively revived capital punishment over the last seven months and brought back the controversial firearm method that has rarely been used in the modern death penalty era.

Autopsy documents and a photo reviewed by the Guardian, along with analysis commissioned by Mahdi’s lawyers, suggest the execution did not occur according to protocol, and that Mahdi endured pain beyond the “10-to-15 second” window of consciousness that was expected.

Mahdi’s lawyers submitted the records to the South Carolina supreme court on Thursday.

Mahdi was sentenced to death in 2006, and the execution was carried out on 11 April. On the evening of his killing, Mahdi was brought into the state’s execution chamber, strapped to a chair and had a red bullseye target placed over his heart. Witnesses were positioned behind bulletproof glass, and three prison employees on the firing squad stood roughly 15ft (4.6 metres) away.

Officials placed a hood over Mahdi’s head before the staff fired, according to an Associated Press reporter, who was a witness. As shots were fired, Mahdi cried out and his arms flexed, and after roughly 45 seconds, he groaned twice, the AP said. His breaths continued for around 80 seconds, then a doctor examined him for a minute. He was declared dead roughly four minutes after the shots.

South Carolina regulations call for the shooters to fire bullets “in the heart … using ammunition calculated to do maximum damage to – and thereby immediately stop – the heart”.

But the autopsy report commissioned by the SCDC indicates there were only two gunshot wounds, not three, and that the bullets largely missed his heart before hitting his pancreas, liver and lower lung, Mahdi’s lawyers say.

Dr Bradley Marcus, the pathologist who performed the autopsy for the state, described two roughly half-inch gunshot wounds on Mahdi’s chest, but suggested three shots might have been fired, writing: “It is believed that gunshot wound labeled (A) represents two gunshot wound pathways.”

South Carolina’s death chamber in Columbia, including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left. Photograph: AP

But Dr Jonathan Arden, a forensic pathologist retained by Mahdi’s lawyers, wrote in a report submitted to the court that it would be “extraordinarily uncommon” for multiple bullets to enter through one wound. Arden also interviewed Marcus for his report and said the state’s pathologist was “surprised to find only two wounds” and took a photograph to send to the SCDC, which clearly showed two wounds. Arden said Marcus also acknowledged the odds were “remote” that two shots made a single wound.

Arden said the wounds were on the lowest area of Mahdi’s chest, near the abdomen, and that the bullets had a “downward” trajectory that mostly missed the heart.

In the firing squad execution of Brad Sigmon, in March, the bullets “obliterated both ventricles of the heart”, but in Mahdi’s body, there were only four perforations of the right ventricle, Arden wrote.

Arden said Marcus, too, “expected the entrance wounds to be higher” and “did not expect to find such severe damage to the liver”, according to Arden’s summary of their call.

“If the procedure is done correctly, the heart will be disrupted, immediately eliminating all circulation,” wrote Arden, who previously testified in litigation challenging firing squads. Because “the shooters missed the intended target area”, Mahdi continued to have circulation, allowing him to remain conscious for up to a minute, said Arden, noting the AP’s report of his groaning after 45 seconds.

Mahdi suffered a “more prolonged death process than was expected had the execution been conducted successfully according to the protocol” and experienced “excruciating conscious pain and suffering for about 30 to 60 seconds”, Arden concluded.

“Among the questions that remain: did one member of the execution team miss Mr Mahdi entirely? Did they not fire at all? How did the two who did shoot Mr Mahdi miss his heart?,” Mahdi’s attorneys wrote to the court. “Did they flinch or miss because of inadequate training? Or was the target on Mr Mahdi’s chest misplaced? The current record provides no answers.”

Arden’s report noted the autopsy did not involve X-rays or an examination of Mahdi’s clothes to assess the target’s placement.

Chrysti Shain, the director of communications for SCDC, “strongly refuted Mahdi’s lawyers’ claims. She said all three weapons fired simultaneously and that no fragments were found in the room. She said all three bullets did strike Mahdi, pointing at Marcus’ conclusion that it ‘is believed that gunshot wound labeled (A) represents two gunshot wound pathways’.”

She added the autopsy concluded all three bullets struck Mahdi’s heart, before hitting other organs.

When the state supreme court issued a ruling authorizing firing squads last year, it assessed whether the method was considered “cruel” based on the “risk of unnecessary and excessive conscious pain”. The court, citing Arden’s testimony in the litigation, concluded it was not cruel because the pain, even if excruciating, would only last 10 to 15 seconds “unless there is a massive botch of the execution in which each member of the firing squad simply misses the inmate’s heart”.

Mahdi’s lawyers said “a massive botch is exactly what happened”: “Mr Mahdi elected the firing squad, and this court sanctioned it, based on the assumption that SCDC could be entrusted to carry out its straightforward steps: locating the heart; placing a target over it; and hitting that target. That confidence was clearly misplaced.”

“I don’t think any reasonable, objective observer can look at what happened and think we can keep setting execution dates,” David Weiss, Madhi’s lawyer who sat as a witness, said in an interview. “I heard Mikal’s cries of pain and agony, and I don’t want that to happen to somebody else.”

South Carolina had ceased executions for 13 years as it struggled to obtain lethal injection supplies, but resumed last year, directing people on death row to choose either firing squad, electric chair or lethal injection.

Weiss is a federal public defender and part of the capital habeas unit for the fourth circuit, which has represented four of the five people executed in rapid succession by South Carolina. The lawyers have said that two of the executions by injections of pentobarbital, a sedative, took more than 20 minutes to cause death, in one case appearing to lead to a condition akin to suffocation and drowning. Mahdi chose what he considered the “lesser of three evils”, the attorneys said.

“Lethal injections were adopted because they were supposed to be more humane with a lower risk of error, but as more information became available, we realized it was actually quite tortuous,” said Weiss. “And the intent of the firing squad was that in some ways it would be simpler, quicker, more straightforward, harder to make mistakes. But they couldn’t get that right either.”

A human rights report last year chronicled 73 botched lethal injection executions in the last 50 years, which have disproportionately affected Black people on death row. Alabama began using an untested nitrogen gas method last year, claiming it was “perhaps the most humane” option, but in its first case, witnesses reported that the condemned man’s body began violently shaking, and it took roughly 22 minutes to kill him.

There have only been three other firing squad executions in the last 50 years, though Idaho recently adopted legislation making shootings the main method of killing.

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