The Meaning of Last Meals

A dozen deep-fried shrimp, a bucket of original recipe chicken from KFC, French fries, and a pound of strawberries. The items John Wayne Gacy consumed before being given a lethal injection in 1994. Two pints of Ben & Jerry’s mint-chocolate chip ice cream. Timothy McVeigh’s binge choice before he was also given a lethal injection in 2001.

Photo by Celia Shapiro

We know these seemingly insignificant details because there are meticulous records taken of last meals consumed by death row prisoners. But the question is, why do we care? Why do we care that infamous criminals, often deeply evil or lost people, receive a final meal of their choice at all? And then, why do we care to know what that is?

Perhaps it is because the choice of the final meal, these condemned peoples’ final “free” choice in life, is thought to reveal something about their character, maybe partially explain or shed light on their murderous past in those last waning moments of existence. In the items on their plate, like tealeaf readers, we should see meaning. But are we all just quacks? So, Gacy chose a bucket of KFC chicken. Well, we know that he worked at a KFC while he was married. In fact, his wife’s family owned the restaurant he worked in, so he probably had it easy. Those were the more innocent days before he raped and murdered young men and stuffed them in his crawl space. So perhaps the smell of those greasy fried handheld drumsticks made him go back to those more blissful days when he wasn’t plagued by the need to torture people. Perhaps Gacy really was sorry. But even if it did reveal all of this, what does it really mean?

Food has always brought people comfort. That is no secret. We even have the phrase “comfort food” and it’s different for everybody. Like our own vittles fingerprint, it marks where we’ve come from and, often, when we were most happiest. Perhaps Gacy had never been more at ease than in that KFC. For me, it’s mac & cheese because I’d come home from grade school and my best friend’s mom would whip us up a batch with hot dogs, ketchup and pepper and then my friend and I would play superheroes until dark; for my boyfriend it’s store-bought roast chicken with creamed corn because that meant they were having a sit-down family meal for once. For McVeigh, it was mint chocolate chip ice cream. But even this unsurprising revelation about food comforting dead men in their final minutes isn’t all that fascinating. So, criminals destined to die choose to be comforted. How obvious!

What’s fascinating at all is that on the widest scale imaginable, we acknowledge the placating nature of food and food memory, and we don’t even know why. All of America knows about the last meal, and most of them have thought about what theirs would be. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice actually publishes and keeps track of each death row inmate’s last meal, to the detail. (And they aren’t the only states that do.) But why? Documentary filmmaker, James Marsh, while researching last meals, discovered in the execution records taken by prisons, that the facts of the executions themselves were rather vague and general, but that the last meals were described in perfect detail. Twenty-four tacos and two whole onions and a bowl of jalapenos. Fifteen cans of Coke, not Pepsi. Twelve candy bars. Why is this so important to us? Maybe it’s as simple as needing to make note of the exact items tax payers are dishing out to feed their condemned, merely a macabre numeric inventory, a quantification of a horror that can’t be quantified. But then why publicize it?

Ultimately, the last remnant from the executed is the final meal and the final words. Food and language. The two most basic elements of humanity. We need food, we require language. A man is no more vulnerable than when these two things are put in the hands of someone else. If you look at our government’s current torture tactics, you’ll find that food deprivation and the denial of human contact and speech are the acclaimed worst forms of abuse. Our military quickly discovered that after a prisoner suffered a long-term denial of nourishing food and human interactions, notably speech, all an interrogator had to do to get answers was enter the room with a plate of warm food and talk. The psychological result was one of child and father, of trust. But in the case of death row prisoners, why do we need their trust? The offer of a last meal and a temporary dais for last words is more of a placebo these days. Maryland doesn’t even allow their “dead men” to choose a last meal (and can anyone actually recall the last words of a death row inmate post-Galileo?). In fact, in most states anyway, the ability to “choose” one’s final meal is in itself a façade. Most state prisons will not allow a prisoner to choose items that their kitchens cannot provide. It is a false sense of last security. You ask for that much-loved American delight, the Big Mac (as violent rapist and murderer, Morris Mason did in 1985), and you may just get some burgers from the prison freezer. Cigarettes and alcohol are denied. James Smith, noted bank robber, asked for dirt, but this was not allowed, so he was given yogurt. Another asked for lobster, and instead got a processed filet of fish from the fridge. If we pay so much attention to the last meal, why don’t we actually pay attention to it?

So then if the final meal isn’t for the prisoner, then is it for us? History tells us that in early Europe, last meals were offered to condemned prisoners by their executioners (including the judges and other administrators involved in the sentencing) as a way of first, indicating that the condemned forgave his executioners by accepting the offer of their food, and second, proving to the crowd who flocked to watch the final meal and execution (both of which were public) that the condemned was accepting his guilt by eating the offered meal. If he were not guilty, would he really accept food from those who would kill him? So is this what we’re looking for in publicizing and fantasizing about last meals? Forgiveness? And does food really have that authority?

I inevitably have to admit that I don’t know why the last meal tradition exists and why we care about it. I don’t understand our fascination. We could be high-and-mighty and pretend that we’re following in the footsteps of Christ whose Last Supper before his execution still reigns most famous. But there is no remnant of that sacrosanct mentality in the way Americans treat death row prisoners today, and certainly none in the murdered’s last meal. There is no ceremony to it except for the fact that it exists. Maybe it’s that we feel so guilty about breaking one of the Ten Commandments ourselves that we, in our last minutes with this person, want to see him or her meet their Maker on a full stomach. Because, as we all know, there is nothing so satisfying as a full stomach, particularly when it’s caused by a meal of pure choice (we’re like the hangman asking if the noose is too tight). We want to believe these criminals died content, because food, of course, has the capacity to do this. To give peace. There was in Christ’s Last Supper a great degree of acceptance, of his death and of the people around him, including Judas. Whether or not Christ existed and feasted as DaVinci depicts is irrelevant, for the story holds true and the author doesn’t need to explain himself. We do not read the story and wonder why Christ decided to eat in his final moments instead of anything else; We know. The more hawkish among us may wonder why Christ would break bread with Judas, but ultimately we understand why he did it. Take, eat. This is my body for which I have given to thee. Food is nourishment and harmony, it is God’s love, whatever God may be. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be explained. Intuitively, we understand the power of food to calm, to placate, and even to forgive.