abolishing last meals

[jaelh]

I'm anti-dp to start with but this story strikes me as the very essence of barbarity:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15034970#

 

 

 

Quote

Texas jails abolish last meals after uneaten banquet

 

The move came after a prisoner requested a huge meal then did not eat any of it, saying he was not hungry.

 

Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed on Wednesday for the notorious hate-crime killing of James Byrd Jr in 1998.

 

The abolition followed a complaint by Texan Senator John Whitmire, who called the meal privilege "inappropriate".

 

Senator Whitmire, a Democrat and chairman of the state Senate Criminal Justice Committee, threatened to introduce legislation if the last meal offer was not withdrawn.

 

"Enough is enough," he said. "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."

 

Brad Livingston, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, replied within hours, saying the tradition would be abolished.

 

Mr Livingston said the inmates would now "receive the same meal served to other offenders on the unit".

 

Brewer's massive order arrived at 16:00 on Wednesday but he told prison officials he was not hungry.

 

It included two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice cream and peanut butter fudge.

 

Brewer, a white supremacist, was sentenced to death for a high-profile race crime, chaining James Byrd to a pick-up truck and dragging him along a road.

 

Most US states have a last meal tradition but differ in its implementation. Some have a menu, others, like Florida, impose a cost restriction.

 

Some requests have been unusual.

 

In 2007, Philip Workman asked for his vegetarian pizza to be given to a homeless person. The request was denied.

 

James Edward Smith's request for "a lump of dirt" in 1990 was also turned down.

 

In 2000, Odell Barnes asked for "justice, equality and world peace".

 

 

a last meal is a privilege, and not a basic human dignity which can extend to those who are about to be killed, however heinous their crime? whole thing strikes me as appalling.

[Bella99]

Yeah. That's really gonna save a bunch of money for the state of Texas and deter violent crime.

[darareaksmey]

I agree. It makes me sad. Don't get me started on the death penalty. I"ll just say I consider it state-sanctioned murder, and leave it at that.

[oolong]

I agree! I am a Texan and this makes me so sick.

Of course, I have recently concluded (although before Troy Davis fiasco) that I am in fact anti death penalty. I used to think "Well, it makes sense that society should get rid of its members that are so destructive towards it", and then for years I was kind of wishy washy on it. I've since realized that may be all well and good in theory, and it might be acceptable in humans all still lived in small tribal groups, but there is no way I'd trust the justice system (ANY justice system -- I don't think it's fixable) to decide such a thing. Oh god, we already treat prisoners so terribly, especially in Texas. A dear friend of mine was thrown in jail when he was severely mentally ill but non-violent (you know, instead of TREATED), and he told me he would rather die than go back to jail. People have no idea just how bad it is. It's so much worse than I thought it was before he told me about it. And so many people there aren't horrific criminals -- they're just mentally ill or addicted to illegal drugs and usually both. It's completely barbaric and I have tears in my eyes now just thinking about it.

When I went to Quaker Meeting, every Sunday there was an old man who stood up just to say the names of those who were being executed by the State of Texas this week, and he wrote and picketed to protest every single one.

ed. for spelling

[emmiedahl]

I don't know why it is a big deal to give them a fucking cheeseburger before they die. It is somewhat of a tradition, right? You get a nice meal, are allowed to speak to your clergy, etc. It is a last bastion of civility in the middle of a barbaric practice.

As for the, "well, it's nicer than he treated his victim!!111!!!": This guy did a horrible thing, and that is why we consider him unworthy of life (as a culture). But what does that have to do with the way we treat *him*? Are we also sociopaths? No? Then we should care how he is treated.

A lot of people on death penalty deserve it. But we don't give people what they deserve when it is heinous and horrible. That would make us as bad as them. Tempering justice with mercy and all.

[oolong]

There was even a dude arguing in the comments of the Slate article on this piece of news who said that execution victims (ha! he didn't use that term of course) shouldn't even be given the normal prison meal before they die. Instead, they should be given only yogurt or ice cream so the poor poor prison workers don't have to clean up their gross vomit when they die. You know, maybe they shouldn't have any meals for a week beforehand, so that there's nothing in there to come out either way!

[demgirl]

I don't think lethal injection usually causes vomiting, which shows just how well versed in the reality of the death penalty that idiot is, seeing as he apparently thinks death row inmates are generally electrocuted.

[slh12280]

What a load of something. Last meals are so costly and encourage people to murder :roll:

[Kitty]

I'm not 100% against the death penalty. What I am against is its practice.

Executions are always in some way public. They are always announced publicly, at the very least. To me it's not much of an improvement over hanging criminals out in the city square. For some reason, we always want to know when someone is being killed. It's one thing if it's a murder victim, another if it's the murderer. It's barbaric, and it serves as an outlet for normal people to act in some way on their bloodlust. The death penalty, at its roots, never was about taking dangerous criminals off the streets. The lethal injection is very painful. Before that, the other options were hanging (flailing around for several minutes after your neck was broken), beheading (swift, but very messy, and the head can survive a few minutes!), firing squad (messy, also with room for error), electrocution (also messy and painful), and gas chambers (probably the least messy and painful of the lot). And then you have other times and cultures where criminals could be punished by burning at the stake, drowning, being dragged to death, or literally being torn apart. A lot of old ways of punishment were to cause some sort of pain and humiliation to the convicted. If burning at the stake is inhumane, and if electrocution is inhumane, is lethal injection really any better since we know how much suffering it causes? Sure, the receiver definitely did cause lots of suffering, but does the state have to as well? Does the world need that much more suffering? and in the end, what does it really achieve? The death penalty is useless. It is not a deterrent. It does nothing to improve society as a whole. It's people killing people to show people that killing people is wrong. What the fuck?

And the State of Texas wants to make an already barbaric practice even more barbaric? It's a tradition. One person is a douche about it, so you have to punish everybody? Horrible. I hope Texas secedes again.

[Kitchen Princess]

Ya, don't make executions public, so people won't act out their blood lust. We have Republican presidential debates for that.

[pomology]

I don't know why it is a big deal to give them a fucking cheeseburger before they die. It is somewhat of a tradition, right? You get a nice meal, are allowed to speak to your clergy, etc. It is a last bastion of civility in the middle of a barbaric practice.

As for the, "well, it's nicer than he treated his victim!!111!!!": This guy did a horrible thing, and that is why we consider him unworthy of life (as a culture). But what does that have to do with the way we treat *him*? Are we also sociopaths? No? Then we should care how he is treated.

A lot of people on death penalty deserve it. But we don't give people what they deserve when it is heinous and horrible. That would make us as bad as them. Tempering justice with mercy and all.

Good point emmiedahl. It's amazing how much people are willing to have their standards judged by comparing them to appalling situations. Like with the whole "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy when people were saying that they'd be okay with it when Saudi Arabia would be okay with having a church built (i.e. probably never), but like, why would we as Americans want to go by their standards? So, similarly, why would we want to go by the standards of a horrible human being? Don't we hold ourselves to higher standards?

But whatever. I'm highly against the death penalty anyway and I don't see what's wrong with life in prison without parole. Frankly I think that would be a lot more miserable. And there have been so many people who were later found innocent who were put on death row. And frankly what gives us the right to decide whether a fellow human being lives or dies? Isn't that what's so disgusting about the kinds of people they sentence to death row in the first place?

[pomology]

Also, I want to add that as much as I hate the death penalty in theory, I hate it even more in practice. So many people who are executed are black or mentally challenged or generally just don't come from privileged backgrounds. People who do come from privileged backgrounds are far less likely to be executed even for the same types of crimes. And people who are so mentally retarded that they don't even understand what's going on? No matter what they did, there is nothing that excuses executing a person like that. It's really fucked up.

[emmiedahl]

I thought people were not allowed to be executed if they were incapable of understanding the punishment?

[pomology]

I thought people were not allowed to be executed if they were incapable of understanding the punishment?

Maybe that's the case now. I don't know. I do know that in my freshman seminar (just about three years ago, so I don't have the book around to look it up) about peace, conflict, and violence we had a reading that described a man being executed who clearly did not understand what was going on.

ETA: According to this http://www.aclu.org/capital-punishment/mental-retardation-and-death-penaltyarticle by the ACLU, the Supreme Court forbade it in 2002. Good thing, but it wasn't really that long ago.

[AtroposHeart]

So a big meal makes the death sentence...less scary.

Gotta love good old Texan logic

[FaustianSlip]

I don't know why it is a big deal to give them a fucking cheeseburger before they die. It is somewhat of a tradition, right? You get a nice meal, are allowed to speak to your clergy, etc. It is a last bastion of civility in the middle of a barbaric practice.

As for the, "well, it's nicer than he treated his victim!!111!!!": This guy did a horrible thing, and that is why we consider him unworthy of life (as a culture). But what does that have to do with the way we treat *him*? Are we also sociopaths? No? Then we should care how he is treated.

Yeah, pretty much this. This just seems like such a stupid fight to pick. The whole, "Well, he didn't eat any of it!" thing, from what I understand, is common knowledge; I was watching an episode of Lockup (don't judge me!), and they were showing the execution chamber at the prison that was being featured and describing the process, and the head warden said something like, "They get whatever they want for their last meal, but hardly anyone ever does more than pick at it." This was years ago, but it doesn't frigging matter if they eat it or not. We're about to kill them, for crying out loud. The least we can do is give them a goddamn chicken fajita, if they ask for it. Is Texas really that short on cash, that they can't afford to feed a condemned person anything but Grade Z meat a couple of hours before they inject them? I mean, if they really wanted to save the money, seems to me they'd abolish the death penalty entirely, given what all of the appeals and such cost the taxpayers.

As far as the death penalty itself, I have very mixed feelings about it. Is the world better off with this white supremacist? Probably. But the way in which the death penalty is applied, particularly with regard to race, has so many fundamental problems and inconsistencies, and there have been so many cases of people that we were so sure were guilty who were sentenced to life without parole but then turned out to be innocent.... I don't think I can really support it as it exists in the United States. It's a giant political stunt, and executing someone should not be a political stunt. It's too serious; you don't get take-backs.

And speaking of political stunts, call it a hunch, but is the Senator who raised this issue up for reelection any time soon? :roll:

[Elle]

Tradition and all aside, I hate to think of how many people who are innocent of murder are in turn murdered by the state. The least they should have is their favorite foods for a last meal. If they are going to be deprived of their lives, give them a goddamned steak. It pisses me off, all the people who say that it's better to kill a few innocent people to make sure a murderer dies, and that it's better to deprive them all of a last meal because of those who really are guilty, and because of someone who ordered a smorgasbord, and didn't touch it. Want to save money on those meals? Do away with the death penalty and save millions.

[DistantStar]

While I do think there is probably a tiny percentage of people who might well honestly deserve to die for their crimes, I also don't trust the state (especially Texas!) to make that decision. There are far too many problems with the system. The standard of proof would need to be waaaaaay higher for me to be at all comfortable with it, and even then, I would want it restricted to the worst of the worst.

Why is it that I keep ending up in states that make the lists of places where the government dees stupid, embarassing things? Years in Texas as a kid. Georgia. Idaho. (The mountains make up for the Idaho bullshit, to be honest. Especially as I live in an odd mutant Dem area.)