Criminal Justice Civil Rights Team represents organizations seeking to stop execution
COLUMBIA, SC – Burnette Shutt & McDaniel attorneys Stuart Andrews and Ashley Pennington represented three organizations that are calling on the South Carolina Supreme Court to stop the execution of Mikal Mahdi, set for this month.
The amicus briefs were filed by the Criminal Practice Clinic of the Joseph F. Rice School of Law in Columbia, which represents indigent clients and has an interest in the harmful impacts of restrictive conditions of confinement; Time Served, a South Carolina legal aid organization that supports people whose personal traumas resulted in incarceration; and The Gault Center, a national organization that works to promote fair and humane treatment of youth in the justice system.
Between the ages of 14 and 21, Mahdi had spent 86 percent of his life in prisons, including at least 6,000 hours in solitary confinement.
Even before then, Mahdi already had endured the effects of generational trauma. His mother fled his abusive father when Mahdi was 4. By the time Mahdi was 11 his father, who suffered from mental illness, had taken the boy out of school in order to subject him to paramilitary training in an attempt to teach him to “manage” his emotions.
“We are far more aware now than we were when Mikal was sentenced nearly 20 years ago of the devastating impact that solitary confinement has on kids,” said Dr. Aleksandra Chauhan, director of the Criminal Practice Clinic and former Juvenile Defender Advocate for South Carolina’s Indigent Defense Commission. “There’s ample scientific research to back this up. That’s why everyone from children’s advocates to prison officials now agree that isolating incarcerated kids is both wrong and incredibly damaging.”
Mahdi was sentenced to death in 2006 after pleading guilty to killing an off-duty police officer. As a result, a judge, not a jury, decided his sentence. His attorneys called only two witnesses in a case that lasted about half an hour.
Andrews and Pennington are part of the Burnette Shutt & McDaniel Criminal Justice Civil Rights Team that fights for systemic reform. The attorneys currently represent organizations and detainees challenging inhumane, brutal conditions at Richland County’s Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center. These conditions include solitary confinement for extended periods and being locked in cold, filthy cells 24 hours a day.
The amicus briefs are available here: https://app.box.com/s/r6vzwgkyrx9snd8mnmzwhjz4y0hyepee. Additional information on Mikal Mahdi’s case is available at www.stop-mikals-execution.com, including his legal team’s recent court filing and press statements.
Disclaimer: Links to third-party websites are not under the control of Burnette Shutt & McDaniel, PA, and our firm assumes no responsibility for the accuracy of the information contained on such websites.