Texas prisons end special last meals in executions

[rsmith6621]

http://news.yahoo.com/texas-prisons-end-special-last-meals-executions-195102056.html

HOUSTON (AP) — It's a tradition with roots that can be traced far back in history: Before being put to death, a condemned prisoner can choose his last meal.

Not so anymore in Texas.

Officials who oversee the country's busiest death chamber stopped the practice on Thursday after a prominent state senator complained about a hefty request from a man executed for his role in a notorious dragging death. Now, inmates get to eat only what the kitchen serves.

The controversy began after Lawrence Russell Brewer, who was executed on Wednesday for the hate crime slaying of James Byrd Jr. more than a decade ago, 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 didn't eat any of it.

"It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege," Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, wrote in a letter Thursday to Brad Livingston, the executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

[Ian David]

1. The last meal is part of the ritual that they get off on performing. n/t

[Botany]

2. It cost many more times to take a capital case to the ...

.... end aka an execution then it costs for a life sentence .... go ahead and give the poor man or women their last meal
and if they don't eat it so what.

[Rex]

3. 'It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege'

I agree as a matter of fact why give them expensive drugs and waste all that money on a million dollar death chamber? Take them out back and line them up against the wall, then bludgeon them to death with rusty lead pipes or cheap aluminum bats (hey you could break a wooden one and that is a waste of good money)! Better yet, why not just throw them down in a pit and let them starve to death!? They killed someone and don't deserve anything but death. As cheap as possible imo.

[frylock]

4. the reason he "didn't eat any of it" was because he probably never even received it..

NPR interviewed the guy who prepares the last meals. according to him, the condemned may order all that shit, but they only get what's available in the prison kitchen. for instance, a prisoner ordering a t-bone steak would likely get a hamburger steak. ask for lobster and you get a piece of cod.

[dtexdem]

5. I'd support keeping the meals but ending the executions.

But I could live with ending the meals, if the executions also end.

[indepat]

6. Just an extension of the barbarism Texas has practiced imo with respect to the condemned since

junior's early days as governor. :patriot:

[Evasporque]

7. Maybe they should just let them eat cake....nt