Texas execution leads to ban on choice of last meal
Texas execution leads to ban on choice of last meal | World news | guardian.co.uk
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Texas inmates about to be executed will no longer get their choice of last meal, a change prison officials made on Thursday after a prominent state senator became miffed over an expansive request from a man condemned for a notorious dragging death.
Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed on Wednesday for the hate killing of James Byrd Jr more than a decade ago. He asked for two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts. Prison officials said Brewer did not eat any of it.
"It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege," Senator John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate criminal justice committee, wrote afterwards to Brad Livingston, the executive director of the Texas criminal justice department.
Livingston agreed and said: "Effective immediately, no such accommodations will be made. They will receive the same meal served to other offenders on the unit." That had been Whitmire's suggestion.
"It's long overdue," said Whitmire, a Houston Democrat said. "This old boy last night, enough is enough. We're fixing to execute the guy and maybe it makes the system feel good about what they're fixing to do. Kind of hypocritical, you reckon?
"Mr Byrd didn't get to choose his last meal. The whole deal is so illogical."
Brewer, a white supremacist gang member, was convicted of chaining Byrd, 49, to the back of a pickup truck and dragging him to his death along a bumpy road in a case shocked the nation for its brutality.
Whitmire warned in his letter that if the "last meal of choice" practice was not stopped immediately he would seek a state statute to end it.
Some other states have a limit on the final meal cost – Florida's ceiling is $40, according to the corrections department website, with food to be purchased locally. Texas never had a dollar limit but meals had to be prison-made. Some states did not acknowledge final meals and others would disclose the information only if the inmate agreed, said K William Hayes, a Florida-based death penalty historian.
Some states required the meal to be served within a specific time, allowed multiple "final" meals, restricted it to one or imposed "a vast number of conditions", he said.
Historical references to a condemned person's last meal went as far back as ancient Greece, China and Rome, Hayes said. Some of it was apparently rooted in superstition about meals warding off possible haunting by executed people.
The Death Penalty Information Centre, a Washington-based anti-capital punishment organisation, said it had no statistics on final meals.
Since Texas resumed executions in 1982 the state correction agency's practice has been to fill a condemned inmate's request as long as the items, or food similar to what was requested, are readily available from the prison kitchen supplies.
While extensive, Brewer's request was far from the largest or most bizarre among the 475 Texas inmates put to death.
On Tuesday prisoner Cleve Foster's request included two fried chickens, French fries and a five-gallon (19-litre) bucket of peaches. He received a reprieve from the US supreme court but none of his requested meal. He was on his way back to death row, at a prison about 45 miles (70km) east of Huntsville, at the time when his feast would have been served.
Last week inmate Steven Woods's request included 2lb (1kg) of bacon, a large four-meat pizza, four fried chicken breasts, two drinks each of Mountain Dew, Pepsi, root beer and sweet tea, two pints (1 litre) of ice cream, five chicken fried steaks, two hamburgers with bacon, fries and a dozen garlic bread sticks with marinara on the side. Two hours later he was executed.
Years ago a Texas inmate requested dirt for his final meal.
Until 2003 the Texas prison system listed final meals of each prisoner as part of its death row website. That stopped at 313 final meals after officials said they received complaints from people who found it offensive.
A former inmate cook who made the last meals for prisoners at the Huntsville unit, where Texas executions are carried out, wrote a cookbook several years ago after he was released. Among his recipes were Gallows Gravy, Rice Rigor Mortis and Old Sparky's Genuine Convict Chili, a nod to the electric chair that once served as the execution method. The book was called Meals To Die For
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This story is really bizarre. I'm not even entirely sure if I believe it. I mean... a white guy being executed for killing a black guy..? Pfft. Like that ever happens.
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