Texas and Last Meals for Murderers

I have to make a startling admission: I listen to NPR on the way to and from work and occasionally other times when I'm in the car.  I'm not proud of it but it is one of the few sources of interesting news stories on the radio.  I like to have my mind stimulated and am more than happy to draw different conclusions from the facts than the commentators, but that's the topic for another post...

... what really caught my attention today was a story about Texas and the death penalty.  The story was about the practice of giving inmates on the way to execution a chance to request food for their last meal.  Lawrence Russell Brewer, a white supremacist sentenced to death for a hate killing, requested a preposterous final meal.  Now the state of Texas wants to stop the tradition of a final meal request.  A cook who had been preparing the final meals had offered to continue the practice, even to the point of offering to pay for them himself and the state of Texas refused, saying that it wasn't about the money, they just wanted to stop doing it. The cook even pointed out that the inmates on death-row rarely get anything resembling the food they requested, as the food has to already be available to the prison.

This got me thinking about whether I think that this practice should continue.  One argument against the final meal request is that the criminals had no such consideration for their victims but like the cook, I dismiss this by pointing out that society shouldn't take the position of treating murderers like their victims: we're better than that.  I would also point out that as a society we have gone to great pains to make execution as painless as possible which I would point out is an effort that most murderers don't make.

Instead, the cook says that society should continue to show compassion as a "civilized society and Christian nation".  Although I don't think it will probably make much of an impression on the majority of the killers who have committed crimes heinous enough to warrant the death penalty, I so think that it is the right thing to do to show kindness to ones enemies, even in this relatively small way.  Nietzsche wrote, "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you" and the best way to avoid becoming like those on death-row is to remind ourselves of our humanity by showing compassion.


-Lane