The death penalty issue seems to pop up every time a high-profile mass murderer, serial rapist or tax evader nears his or her scheduled time to die. Republicans typically say “Die! Die!” while Democrats stick to the slightly tamer “We don’t know what we want! We don’t know what we want!”
The arguments come to a head right about the time the needle slides into the arm of the very suspecting victim, and then everyone calms down to enjoy the show, putting their differences aside until 15 minutes before the next Tookie Williams comes along to make people question their stances on the issue just long enough to get popcorn.
But speaking of popcorn, there seems to be a much larger issue at stake here than to kill or not to kill. That issue, of course, is the last meal, and how it can to be so incredibly unhealthy.
New diets are popping up all over the place every day. There’s the South Beach Diet, the Zone and the Angus diet, which probably claims the lives of more people each year than Ted Bundy could’ve ever thought about.
Every time a commercial break starts on any given network, the eat-right frenzy of advertisements begins. Jared says to eat Subway. Some doctor says to take diet pills. Louie Anderson begs for raw meat. It seems like the only real area of culture that isn’t affected by this diet riot is death row, which for some reason gets to escape the insanity, even though many of its members would adore a little of the stuff.
No, instead of forcing these inmates to eat 100 calorie packs of Doritos and an eight-ounce container of strawberry cheesecake yogurt, the prison system gives them slop upon delicious slop all the way until their last day on earth, which they don’t have to worry about. There’s no guesswork involved. They know when it’s coming, unlike the billions of people on the planet that have to worry about death so much that they wear helmets just to cross the street.
And beyond that luxury, on the prisoner’s last day he is allowed to choose whatever he wants to eat, assuming it won’t kill him.
Four large pizzas and a 12-pack of Coke. Seventeen cans of Manwich. An acre of alfalfa. If it can be acquired, these inmates are allowed to eat it. Granted, some of them do make healthy choices, and kudos to them.
For instance, murderer Victor Feguer decided to have a single olive as his last meal. While this may not be nourishing in any particular way, it at least gets the metabolism flowing for the trip to the gallows, or gurney, as it is these days.
And there’s always the chance that the killing won’t take. If the executioner is going to sterilize the needle, there must be some doubt involved.In the days of hanging, this wasn’t a problem. Felons would want to eat more to have that much more weight in them to hopefully make the transition from living to dead a little quicker. Saddam Hussein probably had 83 bowls of stew before his execution. Some of the ingredients might’ve still been in his beard on the way down.
Lethal injection is another matter altogether. It makes no sense to clean the needle if there is no chance the killer will survive the ordeal. So in that case, shouldn’t the prison try to maintain the great quality of life of the inmate by giving them a healthy meal and some Hydroxycut?
After all, assuming the prisoners don’t die of the lethal injection or, somehow, the electric chair, they’re going to feel pretty awful about all the food they consumed earlier in addition to the awful hangover following having a syringe full of sodium pentothal. When the prisoner realizes that he may now be too fat even to have a chance at taking Angry Joe to the Spring Fling Dance, he may kill himself.
The proof of the unhealthiness of last meals is in the fat-filled pudding. People that eat these meals have almost a 100 percent chance of dying within 24 hours. If normal Americans commonly ate this way, there’d no longer be an America.
If this society is going to thrive, it has to treat even its lowest members with respect, and it’s hard to respect a glutton. So stop giving inmates what they want, and start giving them what they need: love, respect and a single granola bar.