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Last Meals
When Texas stopped granting last meals to death row prisoners
I.
The last last meal granted to a prisoner in the state of Texas went to Lawrence Russell Brewer, who requested two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, a large bowl of fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, and jalapenos, a meat lover’s pizza, three root beers, and for dessert, a pint of Blue Bell ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts. The meal was granted but Brewer refused it, saying he wasn’t hungry. The Texas Senate interpreted Brewer’s action as an insult.
“[Brewer] never gave his victim an opportunity for a last meal,” said Senator John Whitmire, invoking the Code of Hammurabi. “Let him eat the same meal on the chow line as the others.”
When the moment came, Brewer denied an opportunity for last words. According to some reports, a tear hung at the edge of his right eye. He was pronounced dead 10 minutes after the lethal drugs were administered, just before a quarter to 7 p.m. on September 21, 2011. He was 44. It was two days before Texas would do away with the practice of granting the condemned a last meal before execution. Outside the Huntsville prison where his sentence was carried out, one protestor held a sign that said, “Texas…We Take Out Our Trash!”
II.
The Texas Department of Correctional Facilities listed prisoners’ last meal requests on its website until 2003, when it was taken down for causing public offense. The archived version of the web log lists some 310 final meal requests in total. It begins with Charlie Brooks, Jr. (executed 12/07/1982, requested T-bone steak, French fries, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, rolls, iced tea, and peach cobbler) and ends with Larry Hayes (executed 09/10/2003, requested two bacon double cheeseburgers, French fries, onion rings, ketchup, coleslaw, two Diet Cokes, one quart of milk, one pint of fried okra, salad dressing, tomato, and onion, one pint of rocky road ice cream).
Charlie Brooks, Jr. will be remembered for being the first man executed by lethal injection in the United States. He was executed in 1982 for kidnapping and murdering a mechanic while he and his group of his friends were…
