Search This Blog

Friday, September 30, 2011

'Texas’s decision to ban last meals for death row inmates"

The article I critiqued is “Texas’s dumb decision to ban last meal for death row inmates” by Eva Rodriguez. After having researches Mrs. Rodriguez credibility; I have concluded that she began her career with the Miami Business Review; she also served 10 years with the Legal Times, a Washington newspaper, as a supreme federal court reporter, then as executive editor and later editor and chief. She has also worked for the Miami Herald and for the Wall street Journal, and as “editor in the Washington bureau of The New York Times.”

The audience intended for this piece; I believe are those whom are interested in these types of topics. Rodriguez, argues that banning death row inmates from their last meal is “spiteful, petty and dumb.” The agreement was made after the execution of “Lawrence Russell Brewer” whom was convicted along with two others for the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr;” a 49-year- old African American man “who they beat and tied by the ankles to the bed of a pickup truck and dragged him for miles “on an asphalt road until he died. Brewer, according to Rodriguez ordered “two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover’s pizza, a pint of ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.” Prison officials state that the food just sat there uneaten. Unsurprisingly, this action was not well received by Texas officials, which led to the abolishment of the last meal on the “eve of execution”(Rodriguez). She later on states that this behavior is not uncommon for someone who has killed another human being; and that officials should not be astonished by this act. Rodriguez, explains that after this change inmates will all receive equal treatment, such as one meal per prisoner. Unfortunately, Texas carries on being a constant “killing machine”, and are known to be the main state that is “consistently putting more prisoners to death than any other state in the union”. She believes that we as a union have become so unbothered by these actions that we just tend to ignore them; and that we should push so they can bring back the last meal.

The process has become numbingly routine, and that diminishes all of us. And I believe this is true whether you live in Texas or not and whether or not you support capital punishment.

-Eva Rodriguez

In my opinion, she’s partly correct but I think that once you have caused damage to another person’s life such as murder you have made your bed and you should sleep on it. I understand that we should maybe treat them with at least a little bit of respect or what have you; but why should they be able to order so much food and not even touch it? Yes, they should get one meal but not 30 at the same time who would eat all of that? On the contrary, I agree with Mrs. Rodriguez statement about us being concerned about all of these executions that are happening I believe that we as a nation should get together and try and stop all of this non-sense.


No comments:

Post a Comment