On Tuesday evening, John Allen Muhammad, the infamous Washington DC sniper, was executed by the Virginia Department of Corrections. Per custom, he was granted his choice of a last meal, though in accordance with Muhammad’s wishes, the details of the meal were not released to the press.
How does that whole death row last supper work, you ask? In and of itself, it seems like almost a quaint notion. Surely if a prisoner asked for a twelve-course French dinner, the request wouldn’t be granted. So how are the decisions made?
Well, now Slate’s Christopher Beam supplies some answers over at their “Explainer” column.
According to Beam, the least meal policy differs from state to state, and sometimes from prison to prison. In many states, the last meal must consist of foods easily prepared in the facility’s own kitchen, often by the head cook, another prisoner, or readily procured from a nearby eatery at reasonable cost. Without question, the most oft-requested is McDonald’s, or similar fast food.
As for the specific items themselves, the list includes lots of cheeseburger, fried chicken, chicken-fried steaks, ice cream and cake requests, served alongside plenty of Coke, Dr. Pepper and sugary fruit juices.
In fact, for further specifics, you can scope out the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s website, which until 2004 made a practice of listing last meal requests of its death row inmates. There’s plenty of them, too, as you might guess, given Texas’ reputation for lethality.
Allen Janecka, for instance, executed in 2003, asked for “chicken fried steak, French fries, ketchup, salad, blue cheese dressing, iced tea with lemon, two sodas, rolls and butter.” Convicted murderer Bruce Jacobs asked for “a whole fried chicken, twelve buttered bread slices, fried onion rings and okra, six RC colas, one large bag of Fritos, two tomatoes, salt and pepper,” while another inmate, James Powell, asked for only “one pot of coffee.”
Among the annals of more infamous criminals, Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, requested two pints of mint chocolate-chip ice cream. John Wayne Gacy, the well-known clown-faced serial killer, requested shrimp, fried chicken, French fries, and a pound of strawberries.
And as Beam points out, convicted Arkansas murderer Ricky Ray Rector, who in 1992 shot himself in the head in a botched suicide attempt before capture, suffering brain damage in the process, ate a meal of steak, fried chicken and Kool-Aid, but before getting marched off on his final walk insisted on saving his pecan pie dessert “for later.”