Last Meals and Lethal Injection

Texas stopped serving so-called last meals to death row inmates this week after a state lawmaker complained about an inmate request he considered excessive.

The furor arose after Lawrence Brewer, 44, a convicted murderer and self-described white supremacist, requested a last meal that included: two chicken-fried steaks with gravy and sliced onions; a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger; a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapeños; a bowl of fried okra with ketchup; one pound of barbecued meat with half a loaf of white bread; three fajitas; a meat-lover’s pizza; one pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream; a slab of peanut-butter fudge with crushed peanuts; and three root beers.

State Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat, was outraged at the meal request, which he considered outlandish. On Thursday, he shot off a letter to Brad Livingston, executive director of the state prison agency, demanding that prison workers stop preparing special last meals.

Livingston officially responded to Whitmire's letter Thursday, agreeing to end the practice that originated with the state’s first execution by electrocution back in 1924.

Kathryn Kase, the interim executive director of Texas Defenders, a nonprofit organization that trains and assists lawyers who represent death row inmates, said the state's decision to end last meals shows a lack of "compassion for the condemned." The action "says more about us, I’m afraid, than perhaps was intended.”

“I’m very sorry that the state of Texas has chosen to send that message,” she said.

Executions have been all over the news this past week; Two men were executed Wednesday night, both by lethal injection, and in two of the most racially charged cases in recent memory.
In Georgia, Troy Davis, a black man who was convicted of killing a white off-duty police officer in Savannah, Georgia, in 1989, was executed. In the other, Texas executed  Lawrence Brewer, a white man who in 1998 participated in the grisly murder of James Byrd Jr., a black man.

The difference between the two death penalty cases:

• There was at least some doubt in the Davis case, and Davis maintained his innocence. No weapon or physical evidence was ever found linking Davis to the killing of officer Mark MacPhail in a Burger King parking lot. Seven of nine witnesses who initially fingered him have since recanted.

• Brewer admitted to the Byrd murder. In jailhouse letters written after Brewer was arrested for the murder, he boasted about the killing and the thrill of it. "Well, I did it," Brewer wrote in a letter introduced during court proceedings, according to published reports. "And no longer am I a virgin. It was a rush, and I'm still licking my lips for more."

While many people feel the death penalty is justified punishment for murder, some people believe the risk of killing an innocent person is too great – opinions range from “never do it” to “quit wasting time and money; convict them, kill them and be done with it.”

One of the articles I used as a source for today’s post is running an on-line poll this morning, and right now the results are (pardon the pun) dead even.