Plan B Forum

Texas death row inmates will no longer get their choice of last meals, after the menu request of a man condemned for a notorious hate crime slaying left a bad taste in the mouth of a prominent senator.
Lawrence Russell Brewer, who was executed on Wednesday, asked for two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound (450 grams) of barbecue meat, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.

Prison officials said Brewer didn't eat any of it.

Brewer, a white supremacist gang member, was convicted of chaining James Byrd Jr, 49, to the back of a pickup truck and dragging him to his death along a bumpy road in 1998.

Brewer's dinner request prompted Senator John Whitmire to demand the end of the practice in a letter to Brad Livingston, the executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

"It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege," Whitmire, who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, wrote in the letter on Thursday.

Within hours, Livingston said the senator's concerns were valid and the practice of allowing death row offenders to choose their final meal was history.

"Effective immediately, no such accommodations will be made," Livingston said.

"They will receive the same meal served to other offenders on the unit."

That had been the suggestion from Whitmire, who called the traditional request "ridiculous".

"It's long overdue," the Houston Democrat told The Associated Press.

"Mr Byrd didn't get to choose his last meal. The whole deal is so illogical."

Whitmire warned in his letter that if the "last meal of choice" practice wasn't stopped immediately, he'd seek a state statute to end it when congress convened in the next legislative session.

It was not immediately clear whether other states have made similar moves.



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/no-more-foo ... z1Yk9S2AfT

Gob wrote:

Texas death row inmates will no longer get their choice of last meals, after the menu request of a man condemned for a notorious hate crime slaying left a bad taste in the mouth of a prominent senator.
Lawrence Russell Brewer, who was executed on Wednesday, asked for two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound (450 grams) of barbecue meat, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.

Prison officials said Brewer didn't eat any of it.

Brewer, a white supremacist gang member, was convicted of chaining James Byrd Jr, 49, to the back of a pickup truck and dragging him to his death along a bumpy road in 1998.

Brewer's dinner request prompted Senator John Whitmire to demand the end of the practice in a letter to Brad Livingston, the executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

"It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege," Whitmire, who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, wrote in the letter on Thursday.

Within hours, Livingston said the senator's concerns were valid and the practice of allowing death row offenders to choose their final meal was history.

"Effective immediately, no such accommodations will be made," Livingston said.

"They will receive the same meal served to other offenders on the unit."

That had been the suggestion from Whitmire, who called the traditional request "ridiculous".

"It's long overdue," the Houston Democrat told The Associated Press.

"Mr Byrd didn't get to choose his last meal. The whole deal is so illogical."

Whitmire warned in his letter that if the "last meal of choice" practice wasn't stopped immediately, he'd seek a state statute to end it when congress convened in the next legislative session.

It was not immediately clear whether other states have made similar moves.



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/no-more-foo ... z1Yk9S2AfT

Miles wrote:Perhaps after 20+ years on death row some of those witnesses had a change of heart about the death penlity does not mean that the man did not do what they origionally testified to what they said he did. When 9 people said they saw you do what you did it likely you did it. He had 20+ years of appeals. The people he killed didn't get the luxury.

Oscar-winning American filmmaker Michael Moore called on Thursday for a total boycott of Georgia after the southern US state, defying global protests, executed convicted police killer Troy Davis.

On his website (www.michaelmoore.com), the director of Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also demanded that his just-released memoirs Here Comes Trouble be pulled from Georgia bookshops.

"I encourage everyone I know to never travel to Georgia, never buy anything made in Georgia, to never do business in Georgia," said Moore, who was in Los Angeles on Friday as part of a book tour.

"I will ask my publisher (Grand Central Publishing, part of France's Hachette Book Group) to pull my book from every Georgia bookstore," he continued.

"And if they won't do that, I will donate every dime of every royalty my book makes in Georgia to help defeat the racists and killers who run that state."

He concluded: "I ask all Americans with a conscience to shun anything and everything to do with the murderous state of Georgia."

With a lethal injection, Georgia executed Davis at Jackson prison on Wednesday despite doubts over his 1991 murder conviction that made him a poster child for global efforts to eradicate the death penalty.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/boo ... z1Z0EdANlZ

Scooter wrote:Indeed. To have 7 of 9 prosecution witnesses recant their testimony and still to forge ahead, as if they feared that any delay for further inquiry would have shown that they had convicted the wrong man, and so they had to execute him quickly to stifle any more questions from being raised.

Brewer, on the other hand, has reveled in his crime. His rap sheet included stints in prison for drug possession and burglary. He joined a white supremacist gang while locked up. In jailhouse letters written after Brewer was arrested for the Byrd murder, he boasted about the killing and the thrill of it.

"Well, I did it," Brewer wrote in a letter introduced during court proceedings, according to published reports. "And no longer am I a virgin. It was a rush, and I'm still licking my lips for more."

He also wrote to one of his co-defendants that they had become bigger stars than O.J. Simpson and that he welcomed the death penalty. Lethal injection, he wrote, would be "a little old sleeping medicine."

HP

If they have changed their story their testimony is no longer reliable, your dime store psychological speculations about their alleged motives for doing so notwithstanding.

Perhaps you should ask yourself why you need to continue believing the man to be guilty when the witnesses no longer do. Were you there? Is there some divinely inspired insight into the case that you have and wish to share? Or are you just that bloodthirsty that it doesn't matter who pays for the crime, so long as it's somebody?

Miles wrote:I happen to believe in the death penlity in cases where it is warranted

Could they have commuted his sentence to life w/out parole, sure would that have served the public better, I have no idea. I have few answers and lots of questions.