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.
Apparently they missed his heart from 15 feet.
Three rifles. How many were loaded? Traditionally not all of them are, with supposedly no one knowing if they have a live round or not.
You have to do this Bangkok Hilton style if you want an “instantaneous” death. Otherwise the risk of merely hitting a major vessel and the inmate having to pump their own blood out for 80 seconds is very nonzero.
Bugger me that’s bad shooting. Christ, you could have hit him in the right spot with an airgun. Children at funfairs do better than that.
Unless, of course, they were minded to let the bugger suffer a little.
Oh well, in future they should get to throw darts at him. Toxin-laden darts.
dearieme, why not lions armed with lasers?
By the by “Mahdi was sentenced to death in 2006, and the execution was carried out on 11 April.”
In a straight lift from the English Bill of Rights the US ditto forbids cruel and unusual punishment. Waiting 19 years may not be unusual but it’s surely cruel and expensive. Seems to me some judges should be jailed for allowing this sort of thing.
BiG got there first with the Bancock Hilton reference, which sounds highly efficient. Kim Jong Un is quite innovative in this situation.
Javelins – thats the answer – tied to a stake in a field and then lob Olympic spears at the victim.
Just use hanging. Done right, pretty much foolproof.
Given the American’s tactics in most wars, they should have had 200 guys with Thompson sub-machine guns…
One of the adverts appearing on this page today is for the “highest rated shooting range in Krakow.”
Fly to Krakow and get to have a go with an Uzi ( 15 rounds ) or a Glock ( 5 rounds ). All the prices are in zloty though.
…they missed his heart from 15 feet.
Says Mahdi’s lawyer, who is eagerly reported by the Guardian. Meanwhile, one less scumbag is a result.
Mahdi, who was sentenced to death in 2006 following a multi-state crime spree during which he killed a gas station clerk and an Orangeburg police captain,
I wonder how long the people he murdered took to die.
Anyway the firing squad was his choice.
Feck him.
Otto @ 8.15, did that with my son a few years ago. I think it was about £150 quid – Uzi, Glock, pump action shotgun, AK47, AR15. My son also tried a .357 magnum and an MG34. Great fun.
Otto and Addolff:
My son met an American who was travelling the world trying out as many guns as possible. He’d tried out one of those WW2 anti-tank rifles made from an adapted spitfire cannon that can break your shoulder. He was heading for rural Laos, where for a reasonable sum they’ll let you have a pop at a bullock with an RPG.
Why leave it to the firing squad to aim right? Sure it should be possible to set up 3 rifles in fixed position so they all fire at the same point, then have an adjustable chair so the victim is manoeuvred such that his heart is the point of aim? Then you can still load the rifles with blanks and live rounds as required, everyone pulls a trigger, the live round goes exactly where required, but no one knows who did the deed.
Waiting 19 years may not be unusual but it’s surely cruel and expensive.
Indeed. If you’re going to have the death penalty just get on with it and execute the buggers.
Bloody barbarians. You wouldn’t put a dog down that way. Nor would you miss, obviously.
“salamander
Just use hanging. Done right, pretty much foolproof.”
Ah but it’s the ‘done right’ bit that requires some skill. The idea is to break the neck, but too short a drop and sometimes protracted strangulation results, too long a drop and the head is pulled off ( which some might say is pretty definite).
Hence, the ‘table of drops’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Table_of_Drops
Addolff, I am sorely tempted to try it out. Sounds like a blast.
“let you have a pop at a bullock with an RPG.”
I am laughing at that way more than I think I should…
The difference in recoil would give away who fired the blank, I guess.
Anyway, why don’t they use a captive bolt? We kill a million animals a day that way, and it works.
Alternatively the Lubyanka method.
We’d be better off as a country if the (native) population had more exposure to firearms. They are great fun to shoot and not the scary objects the media make them out to be.
Guns don’t kill people, people do – as very vividly demonstrated by the stabby non-native invaders.
@Agent Smith…
True… Younger people I talk to nowadays are horrified to learn that I was taught to shoot machine guns at the age of 14 in the CCF. 🙂
I think that if you’d done any shooting you’d know if you’d fired the actual round(s) from the recoil, though obviously this is greater or lesser depending on the calibre and weight of the round. According to the internet they use a .308, which is basically a 7.62 ie bigger than the now standard 5.56 NATO round. There are then different weights of round – I don’t know but I assume they use fragmenting ammunition which is less likely to through and through and more likely to kill quicker. These are a bit lighter by design and thus would produce less recoil. But I don’t know if the blank shooter(s) theory is real or not – that was certainly the case in old military executions , but it was to give the lads an emotional ‘out’ as they aimed at the bloke they’d been in action with two weeks before. I’d have thought there’d be less (ie zero) emotional or psychological baggage associated with topping this cunt. That said, the only way to actually kill someone instantly is to shoot them in the head. I’m not sure why they don’t do that?
Y’all ignorant. A heart shot is NOT INSTANTLY FATAL.
An assailant shot through the heart can function normally for 10 seconds. Then the draindown of blood starts shutting functions down.
Only a shot to CNS can cause instantaneous shutdown.
And WhyTF did the state perform an autopsy ?!?! You put a man in a chair, shoot him multiple times, then you want to see why he died?
People shooting at a real, live human in cold blood tend to miss, subconsciously it’s apparently very hard to not do. The only really humane method is gas chamber – flood the room with nitrogen, the normal reaction from the body is to expel CO2 so if there is none there it stops the respiration response. Painless death. I’ve worked in numerous places (fruit storage, for instance) where that is a serious risk. Unfortunately that method got a bad name a while ago.
The long delay to execution is completely under the condemned’s control. The law allows multiple appeals at multiple levels. The root problem is the judicial system is so constipated it takes years to get a hearing. Lose an appeal, file for another one, and it’s 2-3 years before that one. Rinse, repeat.
Me
That said, the only way to actually kill someone instantly is to shoot them in the head.
Gamecock
Y’all ignorant. A heart shot is NOT INSTANTLY FATAL.
We’re not all ignorant.
Though Gamecock wouldn’t be disappointed if his red neck brethren wanted POS Mahdi to suffer. The Constitution, with its prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, doesn’t see the sight picture of the shooter. The shooters can claim plausible deniability for a lung shot instead of a heart shot.
Perhaps perp should have been stood up and tied to a pole instead. Hard to get condemned not to slump in the chair while you shoot him.
Sorries, Interested. TL:DR
Though there is more to it. A head/CNS shot isn’t necessarily fatal, though it is usually an instant stopper.
“I’m not sure why they don’t do that?”
Centuries long tradition. Originated when the executioner didn’t care if it took a few seconds for the perp to die. In this case, it appears the perp and lawyer knew it wasn’t going to be instantaneous, yet the lawyer now wants action because it wasn’t instantaneous. Such is how FUBAR the law is.
A heart shot is NOT INSTANTLY FATAL.
It would be if we borrowed Simon Neale’s RPG
America doesn’t have any professional executioners*, so their death sentences tend to be half-arsed.
A job like this needs good men with a care for detail, so the convicted can be unalived with the minimum of mess and no more pain or terror than the law allows.
*outside Planned Parenthood clinics, I mean
A head/CNS shot isn’t necessarily fatal,
It’s how Rommel was killed. 20th July plotter Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel shot himself in the head, only succeeded in blinding himself, and was heard muttering “Rommel” in a delirium before the Nazis executed him.
“the now standard 5.56 NATO”: 5.56 mm? That’s pretty close to 0.22 inches – which is what I learned to shoot as a boy. Goodness me.
DM – yarp they’re similar cartridges.
A lot of infantrymen are not happy with 5.56, even though virtually no-one still serving remembers the old SLR days, but the weight difference per magazine is considerable and when you’re out all day patrolling in eg Afghanistan it all adds up – plus if you get into a spot of bother you’d probably rather have 3x magazines of 5.56 left than have just the one round of 7.62 that you’ve been saving for yourself a la Mr Kipling.
@Steve: Dad had two sorts of ammunition that he called “ordinary” and “High velocity American”.
He wouldn’t let me use the latter until he was confident that I would never be reckless with a gun and could reliably hit targets.
The targets were usually old bean tins which, I suppose, are roughly the size of a human heart. But they clang better, I’m sure.
I understand Madame Guillotine had a pretty much flawless record.
In the ( inferior ) season 3 of Babylon Berlin, a young lady was executed for her part in a terror bombing. She was beheaded by a chap with an axe.
I scoffed loudly, telling the cat that they used the guillotine in Germany. I looked it up and to my horror discovered that the guillotine was only used in the southern kingdoms/states and until the very late 1920s people in Prussia really were chopped with an axe.
A modern rifle with a telescopic sight can have the line-of-sight 1.5 inches above the bore line. If the guards rifles were sighted in at 100 or 200 yards, which is typical, it is not surprising at all that the dirt bag was hit in the pancreas.
A competent armorer would have 1. not used telescopic sights, and 2. would have insured that the rifles were sighted in for the appropriate distance.
I’m not done . . .
‘strapped to a chair and had a red bullseye target placed over his heart’
By whom? Prison guards aren’t renowned for their knowledge of anatomy.
Those who were executed in the British Army were usually shot while seated.
I think that they were offered a choice. Have to check…
Where’s a Pierrepoint when you need one?
Otto…
It took more than a hanging and a firing squad to finish off Obadiah Hakeswill
Ryan, did they hang him in the chair ?
That might have been their mistake.
They labelled him both “spree killer” and “cop killer.”
He’s lucky he didn’t die of blown-off testicles.
(I think Gamecock at 4:44 above called it right. They nicked the bottom of his heart – which is what you would hit if the rifle wasn’t sighted-in for 15 feet.)