Because Killing Prisoners Isn't Enough, Texas Does Away With Special-Request Last Meals

[Canuckistanian]

How long before they devolve all the way back to the bad old days. I'm sure they could dredge up some throwback legal experts to say "the United States doesn't do cruel and unusual punishment":

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.

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/670255/because_killing_prisoners_isn%27t_enough%2C_texas_does_away_with_special-request_last_meals/

[lib2DaBone]

1. Maybe they could go back to public hangings in the town square?

It could be carried live on Fox News... with play-by-play by Rush Limbaugh and Hannity.

[dkf]

2. The requestor is a Democrat btw.

[Major Nikon]

11. My guess is this had something to do with it

http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/32563644.html

Not too hard to figure out why Whitmire has a hard on for death row inmates.

[Junkdrawer]

3. Cue Babs Bush....

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged going to die anyway, so this--this is working very well for them."

[pipi_k]

4. Well I'm sure they were looking for an excuse anyway...

And, you know, anyone with an ounce of sense would have looked at that menu and asked himself how any human being could possibly eat that much in the few hours left before he was executed.

They couldn't have cut it down by half?

Or outright refused HIS request?


Morons.

[Leopolds Ghost]

5. Why not just go back to torture and summary execution?

Oh... wait.

[Upton]

6. Try thinking about their victims..

personally, I could give a damn whether some cold blooded murderer is comfortable or gets a last meal or not..

[MADem]

8. They'll still get a last meal. It'll simply be whatever is on the menu for that day.

No more forty course meals.

[MADem]

7. This was the white supremacist who dragged James Byrd to death-he ruined it for the rest of 'em.

I guess he figured if he kept ordering, they wouldn't give him the Big Zap.

The state Senator who had a problem with this is a Democrat--he found the amount of food "opulent," and "more than a family of four could eat in a week," and noted that the prisoner didn't eat any of it, after all that. He apparently was on the receiving end of (cell) telephoned death threats from death row, which could account for his vociferous stance on the issue. All politics is local, after all.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/09/texas-ends-death-row-inmates-final-meals.html

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....The meal was prepared at the prison kitchen at the Huntsville Unit where Brewer was being held and served shortly before he was executed Wednesday. Brewer chose not to eat it, prison officials said.

State Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat, was outraged at the meal request, which he considered outlandish....Whitmire said he has long disapproved of Texas' special “death row menu." The fact that Brewer didn't eat it “compounded everything,” Whitmire added, showing that the condemned man had “manipulated the system” by ordering “more food than a family of four can eat in a week.”

....Whitmire -- who back in 2008 received threatening phone calls from an inmate via a cellphone smuggled onto death row -- said he's been receiving emails asking him to show more compassion for inmates in regard to last meals. He remained unmoved Friday.

“He gave none of those considerations to his victim. His victim was not given a last meal,” Whitmire said of Brewer, noting that he intends to ensure that the last-meals policy is not revived.

[LARED]

9. What drama queen.

The idea of giving the prisoner a last meal of his choice is a nod to his humanity, acknowledging a little bit of basic compassion for him as a fellow human being, however guilty he may be. And when you lose that it's a very short trip to the kind of killing spectacles we don't see anymore in so-called advanced democracies.

What does this even mean? Is the author expecting Texas to institute gladiator like spectacles because the last meal policy has been revoked and they get the same meal everyone else gets?

If anything they should have force fed this monster all the food he ordered.

[MADem]

10. As the Senator pointed out "James Byrd didn't get a last meal."

The larger point that you noted, and has been ignored, is this--the prisoners WILL get a last meal, they'll just get what everyone else is having. It's not like they're imposing starvation on TOP of the death penalty.