South Carolina sets date for 5th execution in under 7 months
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South Carolina has scheduled the execution of an inmate convicted of fatally shooting an off-duty police officer, which would make him the fifth person the state put to death since it resumed executions in the fall following an involuntary 13-year pause.

Mikal Mahdi, 41, is set to be executed on April 11 at 6 p.m. at a prison in Columbia, the state Supreme Court announced Friday.

Mahdi can choose to die by lethal injection, the electric chair or a firing squad. He must make a decision by March 28, or he will be killed by the electric chair.

On March 7, Brad Sigmon became the first prisoner executed by firing squad in the U.S. in 15 years when he was killed in South Carolina. Only three other inmates in the U.S. have been executed by this method since 1976, and all were in Utah.

Death chamber in Columbia, S.C.

This photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the state’s death chamber in Columbia, South Carolina, including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)

“My challenge and my commitment throughout my judicial career has been to temper justice with mercy and to seek to find the humanity in every defendant that I sentence,” Newman said as he handed down Mahdi’s punishment. “That sense of humanity seems not to exist in Mikal Deen Mahdi”

Once one of the busiest for executions, South Carolina resumed executions in September after a 13-year pause caused in part by the state having difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs due to pharmaceutical companies’ concerns that they would have to disclose they had sold the drugs to state officials.

The state legislature then passed a shield law allowing officials to keep lethal injection drug suppliers private. The legislature also approved the firing squad as another execution method over difficulties obtaining the drugs.

South Carolina has executed 47 inmates since the death penalty was resumed in the U.S. in 1976. In the early 2000s, the state was carrying out an average of three executions per year. Only nine states have killed more inmates.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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