Texas is ending the time-honored tradition of allowing condemned men to pick their last meal before being put to death.
Reuters (“Fancy last supper requests off the menu on Texas death row“):
The Texas prison system abolished on Thursday the time-honored tradition of offering an opulent last meal to condemned inmates before their executions, saying they will get standard prison fare instead.
“Enough is enough,” state Senator John Whitmire wrote in a letter on Thursday to prison officials, prompting the move. “It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege. It’s a privilege which the perpetrator did not provide to their victim.”
The letter was in apparent response to the dinner requested, but not eaten, by white supremacist Lawrence Brewer before he was put to death on Wednesday night for the 1998 dragging death of James Byrd Jr. Brewer requested an elaborate meal that included a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, a meat-lover’s pizza, a big bowl of okra with ketchup, a pound of barbecue, a half a loaf of bread, peanut butter fudge, a pint of ice cream and two chicken-fried steaks. When it arrived around 4 p.m. at Brewer’s cell, he declined it all, telling prison officials he wasn’t hungry.
Whitmire, who chairs the Texas Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, threatened legislation if the prison system didn’t put an end to the practice, which rarely results in the inmate getting exactly what is requested anyway.
But a new law won’t be necessary. Brad Livingston, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, replied that Whitmire’s concerns were valid and that the practice would halt immediately. The prisoners will be served “the same meal served to other offenders,” Livingston’s statement said.
Texas executes more people than any other state in America and most entire countries. So, I guess there are some cost savings to be had here. Still, this seems petty even in the context of killing a man.
I’m sympathetic to Whitmire’s argument that these people showed no mercy to their victims, so they don’t deserve any from us. These people are, after all, convicted killers who have exhausted years and years of appeals. But the “last meal” was always a sign that society, even in putting these men to death, recognized his humanity. Then again, some death penalty opponents actually applaud this change for precisely that reason:
Anti-death penalty activists weren’t bothered by the Texas move, saying the tradition always made the prison system look more merciful than it is.
Jim Harrington, who heads the Texas Civil Rights Project, described the grand last-meal tradition itself as shameful. ”I am totally opposed to capital punishment, but I certainly don’t understand the logic of a last meal, and the way it’s turned into such a show,” he said.
Brian Evans of Amnesty International agreed. ”It’s a minor thing compared with the fact that they are killing him,” he said. “The cruelty of the whole process is much larger than whether you get to pick the last meal that you eat.”
There’s not much doubt about that.
