Editor's Note: This story includes a detailed description of the execution.

A South Carolina man executed by a shooting squad last month may have suffered a long time of pain and then died as the shooter largely missed his heart, a state-commissioned autopsy.

Mikal Mahdi died on April 11 after being shot and killed by a three-man shooting squad. But the autopsy showed two wounds in his chest, not three. No bullet directly touched his heart, just as it should have happened during the execution. Instead, the wound caused damage to his liver and other internal organs and kept his heart beat. The pathologist said the injuries could cause pain and pain to the prisoner while he was still conscious.

"He won't die immediately," said forensic pathologist Dr. Carl Wigren, who reviewed NPR's autopsy documents. “I think he took some time to bleed.”

On May 8, Mahdi's attorney notified the South Carolina Supreme Court of "execution." They listed autopsy and forensic reports in the state, which Mahdi’s attorney commissioned by another pathologist, Dr. Jonathan Arden.

"Mr. Mahdi did experience painful and painful after being shot," Arden wrote in his analysis of the state autopsy.

South Carolina's constitution, such as the U.S. Constitution, prohibits cruel or unusual punishments. In 2021, the state passed a law that allows prisoners to choose a shooting squad as a method of execution, in addition to electric chairs and lethal injections. Prisoners challenged the law in court.

In 2024, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that all three methods were legal and wrote that the shooting team was not cruel because prisoners would not suffer more than 15 seconds of pain.

"The evidence before us convinced us-though prisoners who were executed through the shooting team might feel pain, perhaps to make the pain painful-the pain lasted only ten to fifteen seconds," The judge wroteadding that it is true, “…unless there are a lot of executions, every member of the shooting squad will miss the prisoner’s heart.”

"The huge relic is exactly what happened to Mikal Mahdi," Mahdi's lawyer wrote in a May 8 document.

As for why Mahathir's body showed two wounds from the execution, rather than three injuries, a doctor noted in the comment section commissioning the state for autopsy that "people believe" two bullets suffered one wound.

The autopsy described the two wounds in Mahdi's body almost identical. Pathologists reviewing the report expressed suspicion that the two bullets were exactly the same small hole.

"I think it's small," Wigren said.

On March 7, another South Carolina death row inmate, Brad Sigmon, became the first person to die in the state's shooting squad. His lawyer explain Sigmon believes that shooting squads are better than lethal injections, a method that has bothered by problems in South Carolina and across the country.

The autopsy report reported two previous fatal injections that were executed by fatal injections showed that both inmates required multiple doses of sedation to die in order to die, and the process took more than 10 minutes. An NPR Review During autopsy of more than 200 executed prisoners, the prisoners' lungs were filled with liquid after being injected with drugs designed to stop their hearts, doctors say the lungs have a feeling similar to drowning.

After Sigmon's death, the state hired the same company to conduct autopsy reports, with reports on Mahdi. NPR reviewed more than 20 photos as part of Sigmon's autopsy. The images include multiple X-ray photos, photos of the clothes Sigmon was wearing when he was executed, photos of Sigmon's internal organs and photos of bullet fragments recovered from his body. These photos clearly show that Sigmun had three bullet injuries on his body.

In contrast, in Mahathir’s case, only one photo shared with the lawyer two bullet injuries to Mahathir’s lower chest. There are no X-rays, pictures of internal organs or images of his clothes or fragments of bullets.

"If there were similar documents in previous executions, it would be one thing," said David Weiss, one of Mahdi's lawyers. "It's not clear what happened. Did one of the gunmen not fire? Did their guns get blocked? Did they miss it? We just don't know that."

The South Carolina Department of Corrections did not respond to NPR's request for comment.

Weiss attended Mahdi's execution on April 11. He said Mahdi sat down and pushed towards his restraint as the curtains of the death chamber were pulled back. Weiss recalled that he thought the target seemed to be on Mahdi's chest.

As the gun shot, Mahathir cried and began to breathe. He groaned many times before his body freezes. Someone checked a pulse and declared Mahdi dead. Weiss said he neither heard nor saw Ricochet.

This account matches the descriptions of other witnesses.

Jeffrey Collins, AP reporter Observed After shooting, Mahathir shouted. The target was white, with Red Bull's eyes on it, and was pushed into the wound on the chest. Collins reported that Mahdi groaned twice after about 45 seconds, then continued to breathe for 80 seconds, and then he seemed to have made the final gasp.

"Forensic medical evidence and reported eyewitness observations on the death penalty confirmed that Mr. Mahdi was alive and responded longer than expected or expected," Arden concluded in his report.

Weiss said Mahdi allowed his legal team to share autopsy with the public after execution. His attorney hopes that the information may help prevent other executions like him.

“They missed the hearts of our clients to a large extent,” Weiss said. “I hope we can find a way to make sure that doesn’t have to happen to anyone else.”

Although executive officers in South Carolina, Utah, Oklahoma, Idaho and Mississippi are not currently scheduled to be executed by the shooting squad. On May 1, the Mississippi Supreme Court scheduled to execute its longest-serving death row inmates on June 25, without specifying a method of execution.