COLUMBIA, South Carolina — Mikall Dean Madi was pronounced dead at 6:05 p.m. Friday after a volunteer firing squad unleashed a coordinated volley of rifle fire into his chest at the Broad River Correctional Institution, making him the second inmate in state history to die by this method.
The 42-year-old condemned man, who had spent 68 percent of his life behind bars, offered no final words. He did not acknowledge the witnesses watching through bullet-resistant glass — not his lawyers, not the media, not the family members of the police captain whose murder put him on death row.
A black hood covered his head. A white target was pinned to his chest. Three volunteer corrections officers stood 15 feet away, rifles loaded, positioned behind a wall with a small opening invisible to witnesses.
At 6:01 p. m. , they fired.
Witnesses described a sharp yell that pierced the silence — a sound one observer likened to a deep, violent heave. Madi’s chest expanded hard, then collapsed. His arms flexed.
He groaned twice. For roughly 80 seconds, he kept breathing.
A final gasp marked the end. A doctor stepped forward, confirmed death at 6:05 p. m.
, and the curtain was drawn. The entire sequence, from the first shot to the pronouncement of death, lasted less than four minutes.
The execution closed a chapter of violence that began on July 14, 2004, when Madi, then 21, stole a pistol from a neighbor in Virginia. He also took a station wagon and a set of license plates to cover his tracks. He had a plan — and a destination.
His first stop was North Carolina.
On July 15, 2004, Madi walked into a convenience store in Winston-Salem holding a can of beer. Behind the counter stood 29-year-old Christopher Jason Bogs, a store clerk doing his job. Bogs asked for identification.
Madi pulled out the stolen pistol. Without saying a word, he aimed and shot Bogs in the face. The young man collapsed, bleeding on the floor.
Madi stepped closer, raised the gun again, and fired a second shot point-blank into Bogs’s body.
Surveillance footage captured what happened next. Madi fumbled with the cash register, failed to open it, and gave up. He robbed Bogs’s lifeless body instead, grabbed the beer he had walked in with, and calmly walked out.
He got back into the stolen station wagon and headed south.
Two days later, on July 17, he struck again — this time in downtown Columbia, South Carolina.
Madi carjacked a man, swapped the license plates, and pulled into a gas station to refuel. A stolen credit card failed. Employees sensed something was off and called police.
Before officers could arrive, Madi ditched the stolen car and fled on foot.
Within a mile, he stumbled onto a quiet piece of farmland in Calhoun County. He broke into a workshop and stayed hidden inside, flipping through TV channels, inspecting tools, and browsing a stash of guns. He had no idea whose property he was on.
It belonged to James Edward Meyers, a 56-year-old police captain.
That day, Meyers had been with his wife and five children celebrating birthdays — surrounded by cake, laughter, and love. He had no way of knowing the horror waiting for him back home.
When Meyers returned, Madi ambushed him with a . 22-caliber rifle from the workshop. Nine bullets.
Three hit Meyers in the head. One tore through his heart. There was no chance to fight back, no time to call for help.
Madi poured diesel fuel over the body and set it on fire. He stole Meyers’s police truck, his shotgun, and his service rifle, then drove off as if nothing had happened.
Hours later, Meyers’s wife, Amy — also a law enforcement officer — went looking for her husband. What she found was the worst thing a person can see: the burned body of the man she married, lying in a pool of his own blood, in the same shed where they had taken their wedding photos just a year before.
By then, Madi was already gone, having crossed state lines into Florida. Police caught up with him in Satellite Beach on July 21, 2004, after a report of a reckless driver in a white pickup truck.
Satellite Beach Police Sergeant Jeff Pearson said Madi did not surrender quietly. He jumped out of the car with a semi-automatic rifle — then wisely threw it down and took off running. The chase ended quickly.
After almost a week of violence, the manhunt was over.
Madi was extradited back to South Carolina and charged with burglary, grand larceny, and the murder of James Meyers. Prosecutors pushed for the death penalty, pointing to his long record, his lack of remorse, and the brutality of his actions.
They also revealed something chilling: six years earlier, during a standoff with police, Madi had sworn he would one day kill a cop. Now, they argued, he had finally followed through.
Madi’s lawyers tried to argue for life in prison, describing a traumatic childhood — abandoned by his mother, neglected by his father, bounced from home to home, institutionalized as a child for suicidal behavior. They painted a picture of a boy who grew up angry, broken, and ignored.
The jury was not moved. Days later, Madi pleaded guilty. On December 8, 2006, the judge sentenced him to death.
He was just 23 years old. He was later charged in North Carolina for Christopher Bogs’s murder and received life without parole.
The appeals came one after another. Madi claimed his lawyers failed him, that new evidence existed, that death by execution was cruel and unusual punishment. All were denied.
And the story did not end there.
In 2009, while sitting on death row, Madi became involved in yet another violent plot — this time with fellow condemned inmate Quincy Allen. Together, they planned to kill a correctional officer.
They lured the guard with a simple request: “Can we go to the basketball court?” Once outside, they jumped him, stabbing him again and again. The officer survived, but the scars never faded.
The attack cost him his job, his sense of safety, and his peace of mind.
Madi lost all privileges behind bars, but his death sentence remained untouched. He stayed on death row, and for over a decade, everything stalled.
South Carolina could not obtain lethal injection drugs, and executions stopped. The state responded by rewriting its laws — bringing back the electric chair and introducing a third option: the firing squad.
By 2023, the courts had cleared the way. Madi’s appeals were exhausted. His name was on the list.
On March 14, 2025, his death warrant was signed. He had until March 28 to choose among lethal injection, electrocution, or firing squad. If he failed to choose, the state would choose for him.
Madi selected the firing squad — the same method chosen by Brad Keith Sigman, who was executed on March 7, 2025, in the state’s first firing squad execution in the modern era.
According to his lawyers, Madi feared the thought of burning in the electric chair or suffocating slowly on a gurney. He chose what he believed was the quickest way out — the least of three evils, they said.
On April 11, 2025, Madi requested a final meal of ribeye steak cooked medium, mushroom risotto, broccoli, collard greens, cheesecake, and sweet tea.
Then he was led to the death chamber.
The firing squad protocol is precise. The inmate is strapped into a metal chair in a room that also contains the state’s electric chair, which remains in place. A hood is placed over the head, and a target is marked over the heart.
Three volunteer corrections officers stand behind a wall 15 feet away with loaded rifles. The wall has a small opening not visible to witnesses. After the warden reads the execution order, the officers fire simultaneously.
A doctor then examines the inmate. Once death is confirmed, the curtain is drawn, and witnesses leave. Witnesses — including family members, media, and attorneys — can see the inmate’s right-side profile through bullet-resistant glass.
What followed was described by those in the room as both shocking and deeply disturbing. Madi let out a sharp yell that cut through the silence. One witness said it felt like a deep heave, as if his chest expanded hard and then collapsed.
His arms flexed, and he groaned twice about 45 seconds after the bullets hit. Witnesses reported that he continued to breathe for another 80 seconds, taking what appeared to be a final gasp before going still.
At 42 years old, Mikall Dean Madi was dead.
By the time he died, he had spent 68 percent of his life either in juvenile detention or adult prison. The violence that began with a stolen pistol in Virginia ended with a volley of rifle fire in a South Carolina death chamber.
For the family of James Meyers, justice arrived nearly 21 years after a husband and father was shot nine times, burned, and left in the shed where he once posed for wedding photos.
For the family of Christopher Bogs — the young clerk who asked for ID and was shot twice for it — the wait ended too.
South Carolina’s firing squad had done what the courts, the appeals, and the years could not: it brought Mikall Dean Madi to an end.
