Mahdi was convicted of the 2004 death of Orangeburg Public Safety officer James Myers. The Associated Press reported that police said Mahdi killed a store clerk in North Carolina and stole a car at gunpoint in Columbia, South Carolina when he hid in Myers' shed at his Calhoun County farm after he couldn't buy gas for the stolen car.

A firing squad on Friday executed a South Carolina man who killed an off-duty police officer, the second time the rare execution method has been used by the state in the past five weeks. Mikal Mahdi gave no final statement and did not look to his right toward the nine witnesses in the room behind bulletproof glass and bars