A man convicted of killing a South Carolina police captain in 2004 is scheduled to be executed April 11 by firing squad.
Mikal Mahdi, 41, will be put to death on April 11 after pleading guilty to murder for killing the off-duty police captain 21 years ago, Fox News reports.
"Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils," one of his lawyers, David Weiss, said in a statement. "Mikal chose the firing squad instead of being burned and mutilated in the electric chair, or suffering a lingering death on the lethal injection gurney."
Mahdi stole a gun and a car in Virginia on July 14, 2004, when he was 21, arrest records show. The next day, he shot and killed a North Carolina store clerk as the clerk was checking his identification. A couple of days later, he carjacked someone at an intersection in Columbia, South Carolina.
On July 18, 2004, while on the run after those crimes, Mahdi hid in a farm shed belonging to Orangeburg, South Carolina, Public Safety Captain James Myers. Mahdi ambushed Meyers when the officer returned from a birthday celebration for his wife, sister and daughter, prosecutors said.
Myers, 56, was shot eight or nine times, including twice in the head after falling to the ground. A pathologist testified that at least seven of the shots would have been fatal.
Mahdi’s legal team has filed for a stay of execution.
