There are certain cases that remind you why the death penalty exists.  Mikal Mahdi was one of those cases.

In July 2004, at the age of 21, Mahdi went on a crime spree that crossed state lines and left three innocent people dead. In Virginia, he allegedly murdered a man near his home which he later admitted to investigators.  

The very next day, he walked into a convenience store in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and shot Christopher Jason Boggs in the face, execution-style, over what should have been a routine moment in life.  

Mahdi didn’t stop there.

On July 17, after stealing a vehicle in Columbia, South Carolina, he fled to Calhoun County. There, he ambushed and murdered Orangeburg Public Safety Officer James Myers, shooting him at least eight times before dousing his body in diesel fuel and setting it on fire. His wife discovered him in the shed where the couple had posed for wedding photos just 15 months earlier.  

Let me be clear: this was not the act of a panicked young man who made one terrible mistake. This was a spree of deliberate, brutal killings. Three homicides in a matter of days, across three states, each one a life destroyed and a family left grieving.

I prosecuted Mahdi because the facts were so unmistakable and the evidence so compelling that there was no question in my mind about the threat he posed to society. A man who kills once can sometimes be argued into societal failure or tragedy, but a man who kills three people, including a police officer, shows a pattern of violence that can only be stopped one way: permanently.  

In South Carolina, he was convicted for the murder of Officer Myers and sentenced to death in 2006. He was later sentenced to life without parole in North Carolina for the murder of Boggs.  

The death penalty is not a tool I wield lightly. It is the gravest remedy this state entrusts to its prosecutors. But in cases like Mahdi’s, where evil is repeated, deliberate, and unrepentant, it is a lawful and necessary response.

He was not a mistake. He was not an anomaly. He was a deliberate threat to every innocent person he encountered. He was the embodiment of evil. 

In 2025, Mahdi chose death by firing squad,  a method this state now uses because execution by lethal injection has become practically impossible due to the unavailability of drugs.  I was the first in South Carolina to call for the firing squad. His execution on April 11marked only the second time South Carolina used this method.  

Some will try to make this a broader debate about execution methods or suffering. But make no mistake: this case was never about how he died. It was about what he did while he lived.

Mahdi’s crime spree was violent, calculated, and merciless. These are lives that were stolen by choice. These are victims whose names matter. These are families who have lived every day since carrying the weight of senseless violence.

I took that case because the rule of law must have teeth. Justice must respond not with soft words but with firm action. And when a person repeatedly chooses to destroy life without remorse, society has both the right and the responsibility to ensure that person never hurts another soul.

Some men are beyond rehabilitation. Some crimes are beyond forgiveness. And when that is clear beyond dispute, the law must reflect it.

That is why I sought the death penalty for Mikal Mahdi. Not out of vengeance, not out of spite but out of absolute, unwavering commitment to justice.

Because some evil is so deep, so intentional, and so destructive that the only way to protect the innocent is to remove that evil entirely.