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ST. MATTHEWS -- Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a Virginia man accused in the 2004 shooting death of an Orangeburg Department of Public Safety officer.
Mikal Deen Mahdi, 23, of Lawrenceville, Va. sat and listened in the courtroom of the Calhoun County Courthouse as 3rd Circuit Court Judge Clifton Newman questioned potential jurors from a 400-member jury pool for the capital trial.
In an arduous process that devoured the day, Newman winnowed the jury pool down to less than 100 members.
"You will be hearing the case of the state versus Mikal Mahdi," Newman told the prospective jurors. "This is a capital case. The state intends to pursue the death penalty. And it is bifurcated, meaning that there will be two phases to it. There will be the guilty phase and the penalty phase.
"If you find Mr. Mahdi guilty of murder, you will also have to consider the penalty phase, whether he gets life in prison or death by electrocution or lethal injection."
Mahdi is on trial for the July 2004 killing of ODPS Capt. James Myers. Officials claim the killing was the last act of a crime spree that started in Virginia and spanned three states.
Newman told the members of the jury pool that they would be expected to conscientiously apply the law to the facts of the case and must be capable of setting aside their opinions and weighing only the evidence presented in the court.
Newman went on to ask the panel members if any of them had any family or business hardships that would not allow them to effectively serve on the final jury. Several members responded positively and were either excused from service or had their jury obligations postponed to a more convenient time.
After three rounds of questions, those remaining were then separated into 12 panels, each with approximately eight members. Each panel was assigned a time to return to court for the judge to question them. The jury-selection process is scheduled to last through Wednesday.
The jury pool for the case was larger than usual because Mahdi faces the death penalty. An officer of the court explained that in capital cases, there are always people who are against the death penalty and there are those who are always in favor of the death penalty. Any potential juror at either end of that spectrum is not allowed to serve. Jurors must be able to weigh the evidence and treat each case on its own merit.
In an effort keep the case moving on schedule, Newman brought the first panel in for questioning at about 5:45 p.m. He finally dismissed court at about 8:30 p.m.
Newman told the winnowed jury pool that Mahdi was indicted by the grand jury of Calhoun County on charges of murder, grand larceny and burglary.
Officials allege that Mahdi started a crime spree on Wednesday, July 14, 2004, when a Mercury Sable station wagon was stolen from a Lawrenceville auto auction business.
On Thursday night, July 15, police in Winston-Salem, N.C., said a man believed to be Mahdi was caught on camera robbing an Exxon gas station. He was accused of shooting and killing 29-year-old store clerk Christopher Jason Boggs.
At about 3:30 a.m. July 18, Columbia police said a gunman ran up to a 2000 Ford Expedition at Bull and Washington streets and ordered the driver out. The gunman then entered the vehicle and sped away. The driver later identified Mahdi as the carjacker.
Next, a stolen credit card call came from employees at the Wilco Travel Plaza off Interstate 26 in Calhoun County. The employees told Calhoun deputies that a man came in around 5:30 a.m. Sunday, July 18 to pay for gas with a stolen credit card. When confronted by deputies, the man fled into a nearby wooded area.
Deputies found the Ford Expedition the man was driving was the one carjacked in Columbia about two hours earlier. Police found a set of keys belonging to the murdered Winston-Salem store clerk in the abandoned vehicle.
Investigators allege that at some point between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. on July 18, Mahdi was on the property owned by Amy Myers and Capt. James Myers. About 9:15 p.m., Amy Myers found her husband on their property. He had been shot several times.
A nationwide manhunt for Mahdi came to an end three days after Myers was killed when Satellite Beach, Fla. police responded to a call of reckless driving and apprehended a man observed driving a vehicle similar to Myers' 2003 Dodge police pickup truck, which was stolen along with several weapons from his Calhoun County property.
Waiving extradition in Florida, Mahdi was returned to South Carolina. On Sept. 2, 2004, prosecutors filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty.
In the weeks following Mahdi's return to South Carolina, it was found that his troubles with the law started early in his life. Sheriff J.R. Woodley of Virginia's Brunswick County told the Winston-Salem Journal newspaper that Mahdi was only 14 years old when he attempted to serve a summons on him for throwing a cinder block through his aunt's car window.
When deputies went to his Lawrenceville home to serve the summons, Mahdi and his father refused to come outside and accept the summons, he said. A negotiator was called in and eventually the two agreed to cooperate. Mahdi served time in a juvenile detention center for the incident. His father got a 30-day sentence.
Later, after moving to Richmond, Va., Mahdi was convicted in April 2001 on a malicious wounding charge. Conflicting reports from the Winston-Salem police department say he stabbed either a police officer or a security guard.
Mahdi was sentenced to 15 years in prison with 11 years and nine months suspended. He was released on May 12, 2004, two months before his most recent woes with law enforcement.
The jury selection process will resume in the state vs. Mahdi at 9 a.m. today at the Calhoun County Courthouse in St. Matthews.
T&D Staff Writer Thomas Brown can be reached by e-mail at tbrown@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5532. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.