Tuesday, July 25, 2006

A dinner to die for

On the 3 March 1999, WALTER BURNHART LaGRAND sat down to a dinner of six fried eggs, cooked over-easy, 16 strips of bacon, one large portion of hash-browns, one pint of pineapple sherbet ice cream, one "breakfast steak" well done. One 16 ounce cup filled with ice, one 7UP, 1 Dr. Pepper, 1 Coke, one portion of hot sauce, one cup of coffee, two packets of sugar and four Rolaids tablets. At 9:30pm he was then gassed to death. At least that's what it said on the death row web site and I have no reason not to believe them.

So that got me thinking. What would I have as a last dinner if I were in that position - and would I calorie count and watch the cholesterol? I think I would order a few tequila slammers but I noticed that none of Last Meal Requests included alcohol so I'm guessing that's not an option.

If tequila is out then I'm sure that champagne would be excluded and so that would defeat ordering Caspian Sea caviar. A search through the list of Last Meal Requests showed that nobody ordered a Big Mac or in fact anything from MacDonald's.

I think that I'd have to settle for my wife's chicken and prawn curry. That's definitely a meal to die for.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Charming!

Guy Ellis said...

Death row - you can't beat it for a good meal.

Anonymous said...

You reckon you could eat a final meal under those circumstances? I don't think I could.

Guy Ellis said...

Well WALTER BURNHART LaGRAND certainly seemed ready for it. Who knows if he actually finished it or not.

You also have many years to mentally prepare for the event - although one can argue that it's an event that you can never prepare for. Although having said that... I remember talking to my grandmother (who passed in January) about it and she appeared very prepared for the inevitable and was happy with the life she had had. Which is probably where I shoot myself in the foot because if you're on death row it is unlikely that you're happy with your life to date.

The other consideration is if the person is an unremorseful (according to the spell checker that's not a word) killer then they may have the same psychological attitude towards their own lives as they have for any one's and are therefore not bothered by it. Although, that is fairly unlikely.