LAST MEALS
In the summer of 2014 someone in London, England, had a great idea for a pop-up restaurant. The whole country reacted with predictable horror. “Death Row Dinners” closed before it even opened. Yet the fledgling venture got great publicity. Everything surrounding the death penalty has a visceral power over us.
The last meal is one of the enduring traditions surrounding execution, like the last cigarette before a man faces the firing squad. The last cigarette is a thing of the past. In these days of health consciousness smoking has been banned in prisons, and the condemned man is not allowed his last nicotine hit. He has to remain healthy for the bullet. But the last meal has endured in most states.
The history of the last meal does not stretch back nearly as far as people imagine. In fact, it is less than a hundred years old in America as a formal part of the execution ritual. But it has roots stretching back to medieval European superstitions. In that era they believed that the last meal was a symbolic act. When the condemned man accepted the freely offered food, it was a sign that he was making peace with those who had condemned him to death. In accepting the last meal he was symbolically forgiving the judge and executioner. With luck his spirit would not come back to haunt them all afterward.
In France, the prisoner was even offered a small shot of rum a few minutes before the execution. This was not just a kindness—a slightly inebriated prisoner was easier to handle.
The one place where considerations such as a last meal were not a feature of executions was in England. The law was clear: “During the short but awful interval between sentence and execution, the prisoner shall be kept alone, and be sustained with only bread and water.” (Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765).
The tradition of the last meal was formalized in America in 1924. Texas was the first state to introduce it, and it quickly caught on. Prior to 1924, executions were carried out on a county by county basis, and last meals were organized locally. In 1924 the state took over executions, and last meals became a fixture of the procedure. But last meal is a misnomer. It isn’t always the last meal served to the prisoner, because hours away from execution many cannot face it. Sometimes the meal—called a “special meal”—was served a few days prior to the execution.
Each state does it in its own way, but almost always alcohol and tobacco are denied the prisoner. Unusual items are not always available and often substitutes are used. Some states have tight restrictions on what may be ordered. For instance, Florida limits the budget to forty dollars and the ingredients must be purchased locally. Oklahoma is even stingier, limiting the budget to fifteen dollars. Occasionally, family members are allowed eat with the prisoner. In Louisiana, the prison warden traditionally joins the condemned prisoner. On one occasion, the warden actually paid out of his own pocket for the two of them to enjoy a lobster dinner.
A certain latitude is often allowed. Francis “Two Gun” Crowley, a New York gangster who went to the chair in Sing Sing in 1932, was allowed to share his last meal with John Resko, a murderer also on death row. Resko never got his own last meal; his sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment. Raymond Fernandez, the Lonely Hearts Killer, was fried in 1951. He requested that his last meal be distributed among the other inmates in the prison. They got his omelet and fries.
It is impossible to go through every last meal request, but some do stand out. Here are some of the highlights of the last meals of those who went to death in the electric chair.
Ruth Snyder was famously photographed in the electric chair by a reporter who used a concealed camera. The shocking image was front page news in 1928 when she was executed for the murder of her husband. Ruth’s final meal was chicken Parmesan with alfredo pasta, followed by ice cream, and washed down by two milkshakes and a twelve-pack of grape soda.
“Two Gun” Francis Crowley was a punk Irish gangster in Prohibition-era New York. During a three-month murder and robbery spree he killed a number of times. He was caught after a two-hour shootout, during which cops fired over seven hundred rounds into the apartment he was holed up in. His last meal, in 1932, was steak and onions with french fries, followed by apple pie and ice cream. He shared it with a fellow prisoner. His last words were to ask for a cloth to wipe off the chair, as it had been used in a previous execution.
Bruno Richard Hauptmann, convicted of the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh toddler, was executed in 1936. He asked for a last meal of celery, olives, chicken, french fries, buttered peas, cherries, and a slice of cake.
The “Lonely Hearts Killers,” Raymond Martinez Fernandez and Martha Jule Beck, murdered as many as twenty women for their savings between 1947 and 1949. They were executed in Sing Sing, New York, on March 8, 1951. Fernandez had an onion omelet and french fries, followed by a chocolate candy bar and a cigar. He asked that the meal be shared among his fellow prisoners.
Original teen “rebel without a cause” Charles Starkweather was executed in Nebraska in 1959 for a series of murders committed with his teen girlfriend. He declined the usual steak dinner and opted for a plate of cold cuts instead.
Joseph “Mad Dog” Taborsky was sentenced to death in 1950, partly on the testimony of his brother. But when his brother was declared insane and institutionalized, Taborsky appealed and was released from prison after serving just three years. In 1955, he went on a crime spree, killing six people in a series of brutal armed robberies. He was executed on May 17, 1960, at Wethersfield Penitentiary, Connecticut. His accomplice in the six murders got a life sentence, in part because he had protected a three-year-old who Taborsky had wanted to kill. Taborsky asked for a banana split and a cherry soda, followed by coffee, before going to the chair. He also asked for a pack of cigarettes.
Richard Kiefer, from Fort Wayne, Indiana, grew tired of his wife’s nagging about his fishing and drinking, so he took a hammer to her in 1957. When his five-year-old daughter tried to break up the fight, he killed her too. His final meal, before being executed in 1961, was fried chicken and french fries, followed by banana cream pie and vanilla ice cream.
Ralph Hudson went to the chair in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1963. He was the last person executed by that state, for the crime of stabbing his estranged wife to death. His last meal was prime rib steak and ice cream, followed by a good cigar.
Ted Bundy was the handsome boy-next-door who killed thirty women. He was executed in Florida in 1989. When it came time to face the chair, his courage—or at least his appetite—failed him. He declined a last meal, and was instead given the standard steak (medium-rare), eggs (over easy), hash browns, toast, milk, coffee, and juice. But he didn’t eat any of it.
Allen Lee Davis was a huge man with a huge appetite. He had bludgeoned a pregnant woman to death and had killed both her young daughters. Weighing 344 pounds, he requested a feast—a lobster tail, half a pound of fried shrimp, six ounces of fried clams, and a side of fried potatoes. He also had half a loaf of garlic bread and washed it down with root beer. When he was electrocuted in 1999, he bled profusely from the nose and suffered severe burns to his groin and legs. There was an outcry, which Governor Jeb Bush dismissed, saying, “Everybody’s getting all worked up about a nosebleed.” But the horror of his execution caused Florida to switch to lethal injection immediately afterwards.
James Neil Tucker was a rapist and career criminal, convicted of shooting two women in the head during two burglaries. He was executed in South Carolina in 2004. For his final meal he chose a pizza, two BLT sandwiches, and Mountain Dew.
Some last meal requests are denied by the state. Philip Workman was facing lethal injection in Tennessee when his final request was turned down. He had been convicted in 1982 for the murder of a police officer during a botched armed robbery. After serving twenty-five years—more than a life sentence in most developed countries—he was finally strapped to the gurney on May 9, 2007. He had asked that his last meal—a vegetarian pizza—be given to a homeless person. It was a selfless gesture, but one the prison authorities decided was not possible. So he refused any last meal. But his attempt to give a pizza to a street person got widespread media coverage. The attempted gesture seemed to tug at people’s heartstrings in some way, and in the hours following his execution local homeless shelters received several hundred pizzas. They were not all vegetarian, but it is the thought that counts. One woman donated $1,200 worth of pizzas to Nashville’s Rescue Mission. An employee of the mission, Marvin Champion, told The Tennessean: “I used to be homeless, so I know how rough it gets. But we got pizza to feed enough people for a while.” PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) president Ingrid Newkirk donated fifteen veggie pizzas, saying, “Workman’s act was selfless, and kindness to all living beings is a virtue.”
Perhaps the most unusual last meal request was from Victor Feguer, a drifter who kidnapped a doctor and killed him for whatever drugs he had in his possession. He was hanged in Iowa in 1963, the last execution in that state. His final meal was a single olive, with the stone still in it. Robert Buell, a serial child rapist and murderer executed in Ohio in 2002, enjoyed the same last meal.
James Edward Smith, executed in Texas in 1990 for the murder of an insurance clerk, claimed to be a voodoo priest, having been obsessed with black magic and voodoo since the age of six. He asked for a plate of dirt but was given a yogurt instead. There were questions about his mental competency, but the execution went ahead none the less. The reason he asked for dirt was because he believed it would prevent his spirit from coming back as a ghost. When his request was denied, he told officials that his ghost would haunt the facility at Huntsville for the next three hundred years.
Ricky Ray Rector, executed in Arkansas in 1992, was severely mentally disabled (as a result of an attempted suicide, when he shot himself in the head). He enjoyed most of his last meal but left the pecan pie on the plate, telling stunned warders that he would eat it later, after the execution. Many people felt great unease at his execution due to his poor grip on reality and obvious disability.
Not every prisoner requests a last meal. For those who don’t, they have two options. They can have whatever is on the menu on the day of their execution in the general body of the prison, or they can have the generic last meal, which is quite a substantial feast. For those unable to make up their minds, they get a steak, medium rare, eggs over easy, hash browns, and buttered toast. They follow this with jello, and may wash it down with a glass of milk and a glass of juice.
The most gruesome of all last meal requests came from Doug Stephener, a huge evil-looking monster with a face that could have come from a Lon Chaney movie. According to reports that circulated widely, this fiend was a pedophile who had eaten parts of his victims. He was scheduled to die by lethal injection in Texas in the fall of 2014; however, there was worldwide revulsion at his apparent request. He said he wanted to eat a young boy, under the age of eight, and a non-Asian, for his final repast. Of course it was an Internet hoax, though it took in many people. Had they done their research they would have realized immediately it could not be true. Texas had abolished the tradition of the last meal three years earlier, in September 2011.
The reason for abolishing the last meal was that one prisoner abused the privilege, at least according to Texan officials. Lawrence Russell Brewer was a vile white supremacist, who took part in one of the most horrific race killings in living memory. Along with two companions, he picked up a black man, James Byrd Jr., in Jasper, Texas. Byrd was looking for a lift, but the three men chained him to the back of their pickup truck and dragged him to his death. He was alive for about a mile of the ordeal before his head struck something on the road and was torn from his body. The forensic evidence was clear that he was alive up to that point. When Brewer was executed in 2011, he used the occasion to give one final middle finger to the world. He requested a triple bacon cheeseburger, two chicken fried steaks with gravy and onions, a cheese and beef omelet, tomatoes, a meat lovers pizza, some bell peppers and jalapenos, a bowl of okra, a pound of barbecued meat, half a loaf of bread, and three fully loaded fajitas. He also ordered three root beers, a pint of ice cream, and a slab of peanut butter fudge.
On the day that he was to enjoy this banquet, the general body of the prison were getting sloppy joes, navy beans, creamed corn, and sliced bread. The prison provided the huge feast for Brewer, despite the fact that no ordinary man would have a hope of making a serious dent in such a meal. When the meal arrived, Brewer refused to eat a bite. The food was eventually thrown out. In reaction both to the flagrant waste and the vile man who had created the waste, Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire wrote to Huntsville Penitentiary Chief Brad Livingston: “It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege. Enough is enough.”
He went on to describe the last meal as “ridiculous” and pointed out that Brewer had not allowed James Byrd the privilege of a last meal or any other merciful consideration. Forks down; the last meal was over.
Livingston pulled the plug on last meals in Texas, immediately announcing that from that day on convicts on death row would eat whatever was on the prison menu on the day of their execution.
There was a liberal backlash, with Elizabeth Stein, producer of “Execution Watch” for KPFT-FM radio station, telling the Houston Chronicle: “I think it’s sad that our elected and appointed leaders are wasting their time talking about menus on death row when we have important issues like potential innocence and the validity of the entire death-penalty system that desperately need to be looked at.”
Former prison chef Brian Price prepared over two hundred last meals for Texas death row and wrote a book about his experiences, Meals to Die For. He tried to introduce an element of reality into the fray, denying that last meals were an extravagance.
“They only get items in the commissary kitchen. If they order lobster, they get a piece of frozen pollock. They quit serving steaks in 1994. If they order a hundred tacos, they get two or three,” he pointed out. “Whitmire’s just getting on a political soapbox.”
Soapbox or no, Whitmire got his way, and Texas, the state responsible for more than a third of all US executions, no longer honors the age-old tradition.