A 3-pound filet, two baked potatoes, a slab of ham, some green bean casserole, a Big Mac or two and a banana cream cheesecake. Sounds like a pretty tall order, right? Well, it is. Especially for someone who is on death row.
While this order is hypothetical, it is not dissimilar to what death row inmate Lawrence Russell Brewer thought was appropriate to order the night before his execution.
Although prisoners are denied access to alcohol and tobacco, they are allowed to order hefty meals on the eve of their execution.
This was true in Texas until Brewer made a mockery of the system by placing a ridiculous order just to stare at it instead of eat it.
Offering someone a nice meal of his or her choice seems like the least that can be done for a prisoner who has mere hours to live. However, those rules should not apply to people who are being executed for heinous crimes.
Some people may think that denying a prisoner one last meal just adds to the cruel and unusual punishment that is capital punishment, but this is misguided.
Why should someone who has committed murder be granted the privilege of ordering an elaborate meal at any point during his or her time on death row?
They shouldn’t. I don’t think any of the perpetrators asked their victims what they wanted to eat before they killed them.
Furthermore, prisoners on death row should not be given a gourmet meal when normal prisoners are fed standard prison food. The privileges awarded to prisoners on death row should be confined to a last statement. That is it.
State Sen. John Whitmire, the chair of the Texas Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, sparked the resistance to the “last supper” concept. Reuters reported that Whitmire wrote in a letter to prison officials that, “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.”
That statement is both true and one that a lot of people forget.
Criminals that have acted in such a cruel and unjust way should be denied anything that makes them a part of civilized society; they have proved how undeserving they are of such rights.
Whitmire was prepared to take action against the prison system but the Executive Director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Brad Livingston agreed with Whitmire, saying that prisoners will be denied this right going forward, according to the Reuters article.
While it may be unfair to treat death row inmates worse than regular inmates, it is wholly unfair to the families of the victims that death row inmates have tormented to allow their tormentor the liberty of a nice meal.
Ultimately, ordering an obnoxiously large meal just to stare at it falls well beyond the line that should be drawn between society and death row inmates.
Thankfully, Brewer forced the prison system in Texas to rethink this absurd ritual.
Reach the columnist at lweinick@asu.edu
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