Rosario Monachino
Death row inmates in Texas are no longer allowed to get a last meal because of one man’s very specific request.
Inmates sentenced to death row are given the right to have one final bit of food of their choice before they are executed in most US states.
The idea of giving inmates a last meal is rooted back in ancient Rome, Greece and China – supposedly due to a superstition about meals warding off possible haunting by condemned people once they are put to death, according to Jacksonville.com.
However, one man made a specific request for his final dinner and it has led to inmates in Texas no longer being allowed to have a final meal.
Hear this Texas death row inmate’s last words below…
Lawrence Russell Brewer was a white supremacist who was jailed along with three other men for murdering James Byrd Jr in 1998.
They brutally beat him, urinated on him and spray-painted his face before dragging his body for three miles along a road after tying him to their pick-up truck.
Brewer and one of his other accomplices, John King, were the first white men to receive the death penalty for killing a Black man in modern Texas.
Meanwhile, the other man involved, Shawn Berry, was also given a life sentence.
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Before Brewer was put to death, he was asked by prison guards what he would like to have for his last meal.
According to a report from the Houston Chronicle, Brewer cheekily requested a wide range of meals, including chicken steaks, fried okra with ketchup, and a cheese omelette with ground beef, jalapenos and bell peppers.
On top of this, he also asked for a ‘triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, three fajitas, one pound of barbecue and a half loaf of white bread and pizza meat lover’s special’.
The requests didn’t stop there though as he also wanted one pint of ‘homemade vanilla’ Blue Bell ice cream – along with one slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts and three root beers.
As it was his final meal, those working in the prison did their best to accommodate Brewer’s last meal.
However, when he was given it, the inmate defiantly refused to take a single bite – stating that he wasn’t hungry.
He was executed in 2011 but due to Brewer’s refusal, Texas senator John Whitmire ended the 87-year-old tradition, meaning from that day forward nobody on death row in Texas would get a ‘special meal’.
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According to the outlet, Whitmere says in a letter to prisons chief Brad Livingston: “It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege.
“I have yielded to TDCJ judgment in the past, but now enough is enough.”
He also told the associated press that putting an end to the right for a last meal was ‘long overdue’.
“This old boy last night, enough is enough,” Whitmire adds.
“We’re fixing to execute the guy and maybe it makes the system feel good about what they’re fixing to do. Kind of hypocritical, you reckon?”
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