Last week, news broke that the state of Texas had decided to move away from the practice of offering prisoners condemned to execution any special last meal. Ironically, Brian Price, a former Texas inmate who cooked the final meals for inmates, and author of “Meals to Die For”, had his offer of free meals turned down.

The issue arose after state Senator John Whitmire, chairman of the Texas senate’s criminal justice committee, called the tradition of offering a special last meal ridiculous and illogical.

He had complained about a request from a man being executed, Lawrence Brewer, for his role in a notorious hate crime.

Brewer’s request was a little cheeky: two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover’s pizza, a big tub of ice-cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.

Prison officials said Brewer did not eat any of it.

Thus, officials who oversee the US’s busiest death space stopped providing special final meals last week.

Price, whose book is about his former duties as provider of final meals for prisoners condemned to death, called the move “cold hearted”.

I am offering to prepare, and/or pay for, all of the last meal requests from this day forward. Taxpayers will be out of nothing.

Officials want nothing to do with his offer and politely turned it down.

During his tenure, Price cooked 220 final meals between 1991 and 2003 until he was paroled from the Texas department of criminal justice’s Huntsville unit.

He now runs a restaurant in east Texas.

[Source: Guardian]