South Carolina firing squad ‘botched’ execution of cop killer Mikal Mahdi as bullets missed heart, left him alive ‘longer than was intended’

A South Carolina firing squad tried to shoot a convicted cop killer in the heart and missed in a “botched” execution that left him in “excruciating” pain as he bled out, according to an autopsy and experts. Mikal Mahdi, 42 — who murdered a South Carolina police officer during a crime spree in 2004 — was shot to death by a three-person firing squad on April 11. But an autopsy later revealed that none of the bullets hit his heart directly, and that his chest showed only two bullet wounds instead of three, according to a disturbing report by NPR....