Texas puts end to last meal requests

HOUSTON – Texas inmates who are set to be executed will no longer get their choice of last meals, a change prison officials made Thursday after a prominent state senator became miffed over an expansive request from a man condemned for a notorious dragging death.

Lawrence Russell Brewer, who was executed Wednesday, asked for two chicken-fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, a pound of barbecue, a meat lover’s pizza and more. Prison officials said Brewer didn’t eat any of it.

“It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege,” Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, wrote in a letter Thursday to Brad Livingston, the executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

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.”

Brewer, a white supremacist gang member, was convicted of chaining Jason Byrd Jr., 49, to the back of a pickup truck and dragging him to his death along a bumpy road in a case that shocked the nation for its brutality.

“It’s long overdue,” Whitmire, a Houston Democrat, told the Associated Press. “This old boy last night, enough is enough. 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?

“Mr. Byrd didn’t get to choose his last meal. The whole deal is so illogical.”