Texas execution No. 230 took place on Aug. 23, 2000. Offender David Earl Gibbs, on Death Row since March 21, 1986, was meticulous in his last meal request.
He ordered a chef salad, with any dressing except oil and vinegar, two bacon cheeseburgers “all the way,” deep-fried home fries (with chili powder on top), a pitcher of fruit-flavored milkshake, two scotch eggs (boiled and packed in a sausage roll, battered, deep-fried and served with syrup) and a slice of pie.
His final words:
“Mr. Bryant, I have wronged you and your family and for that I am truly sorry. I forgive, and I have been forgiven. Death is but a brief moment’s slumber and a short journey home. I’ll see you when you get there. I am done, Warden.”
He was injected first with sodium thiopental, which sedated him; then pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant that collapsed his diaphragm and lungs; and then potassium chloride, which stopped his heart. It took about seven minutes for the State of Texas to end his life.
The drugs cost $86.08.
Gibbs was convicted in the July 1985 slayings of Marietta Bryant and Carol Ackland. He was said to have burglarized their apartment and then cut their throats with a butcher knife. He was working at the apartment complex at the time. His previous occupation was as a nursing assistant. He had been convicted of auto theft in Michigan in 1978 and served time in Galveston in 1981 for robbery and theft.
Why is this information so interesting?
The temptation is to launch into a tirade against the death penalty, or perhaps a tirade against a government that would send a convicted murderer to his death with a fine meal in his belly, or perhaps a tirade against all criminals and the fact that their just deserts should probably not include, well, just desserts.
It might be an opportune point to criticize Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush, the Texas governor, for the long list of executions that have occurred on his watch.
But that’s not what this is about.
It’s about the Internet.
Everything is available to everyone on the Internet. From fast-hot-free-sex-now to used cars to old golf clubs to e-mail to mail-order steaks and lobsters.
It’s so tiring.
But occasionally, a searcher runs into a Web site that somehow sends a message that is profound, troubling and provocative, all at the same time, wrapped into one little URL.
Type it in and see what you find: http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/finalme als.htm
This particular part of the site lists the final meal requests of the 230 people who have been executed since Dec. 7, 1982, when Charlie Brooks Jr. was slain by the state after a meal of T-bone steak, french fries, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, rolls, peach cobbler and ice tea. (The number is now 231, but the list hasn’t been updated yet.)
Somehow, a dark clarity emerges from the combination of the description of the offense, the final words and request for a last meal. This is a compendium of what it comes down to when you are convicted of a capital crime in Texas or in any of 37 other states that have death penalty statutes.
Texas puts the details of executions on the Internet, says Glen Castlebury, the prison system’s chief spokesman, because “the media has just set about in a giant herd to politicize and melodramatize the death penalty.” A former reporter himself, Castlebury is not shy about criticizing media and its taste for the details of death.
He has his own description of the Web site.
“It is ghoulish and bizarre because the media of this nation demand it to be so,” he said. The department, which has only four public affairs people, grew weary of requests from around the world for last meal details and the inside skinny on each executed convict. So, it put the information where anyone can see it.
Castlebury believes it is “either foolish or misplaced” to expect him to interpret the meaning of it all. The department, he says, is just carrying out the public policy of the state of Texas.
There are some strange twists in this list.
Richard Foster was executed last April 24.
He asked for a beef fajita, blooming onion, fried chicken (white meat), jalapeno peppers, large Caesar salad with blue cheese dressing, bread rolls with butter, vanilla ice cream, three bananas, one Coke, a pot of coffee, a pack of cigarettes.
He got everything but the cigarettes, which, because of the health hazards attached to smoking, are prohibited by Texas Department of Criminal Justice regulations.
The list does not yet include the recent execution of a man for the slayings of his family. Castlebury, however, said that execution, which he attended, did say something about the human condition.
Typically, the victim’s family and family members of the person executed are allowed to witness executions. In this case, they were one and the same, so no one came to watch.
It could be that the Texas Web site is compelling because it is so real. The Internet is long on chatter, rumors and spurious theories, but there is no arguing with what Texas has presented on its death site.
The execution number. The crime. The last name. The first name. The Department of Criminal Justice number. The date of execution. Final meal request.
These people are all dead. Unlike their victims and unlike most of the rest of us, they knew exactly when, where and how it was going to happen.
Read about them in sequence, and the thoughts just don’t stop coming.
Someone kills someone, gets caught, goes to prison, sits on Death Row and then decides that what he most wants for his final meal is a fish sandwich, french fries and milk (Jay Pinkerton. May 15, 1986).
Jeffery Barney preceded him in death by a month. For his last meal he ordered two boxes of Frosted Flakes and a pint of milk.
There are some moments that seem somehow profound in this collection of final meals and final words.
Last March 1, Odell Barnes Jr. had no final meal request. He asked instead for “Justice, Equality, World Peace.”
His final statement:
“I’d like to send my great love to all my family members, my supporters, my attorneys. They have all supported me throughout this. I thank you for proving my innocence, although it has not been acknowledged by the courts. May you continue in the struggle and may you change all that’s being done here today and in the past. Life has not been that good to me, but I believe that now, after meeting so many people who support me in this, that all things will come to an end, and may this be fruit of better judgments for the future. That’s all I have to say.”
Barnes was convicted in the November 1989 robbery and murder of Helen Bass. She had been beaten with a lamp and a rifle, stabbed in the neck and shot in the head. Her nude body was found on her bed, where she had been sexually assaulted. Barnes was seen trying to sell a .32-caliber pistol that had been stolen from the house.
On Oct. 7, 1998, Jonathan Nobles wanted only “Eucharist-Sacrament” for his final meal.
Nobles had been convicted in the September 1986 stabbing deaths of two women. He was employed by the Central Texas Crime Prevention Association at the time of the killings. He had consumed drugs and alcohol beforehand. He confessed to the police after he was arrested at his home.
He read from Corinthians, an essay about the nature of true love, before he was executed.
Three months earlier, David Castillo ordered 24 soft-shell tacos, six enchiladas, six tostadas, two whole onions, five jalapenos, two cheeseburgers, one chocolate shake, one quart of milk and one package of Marlboro cigarettes–which, of course, were prohibited by state policy.
Delbert Teague Jr. had no request for a final meal but ate a hamburger at his mother’s request.
On May 28, 1997, Robert Madden asked that his final meal be provided to a homeless person.
Carlos Santana, executed March 23, 1993, asked for “Justice, Temperance, with mercy.” (And probably meant justice tempered with mercy.)
What does all of this tell us about the death penalty?
Maybe nothing, and maybe a lot, depending on how you read it.
Some people clearly view those last few hours as a chance to try to wrestle some feeling of fullness, some kind of completion, from their violent, troubling lives.
Do these comments reflect repentance, some sense that these condemned convicts have connected with the creator and seek mercy in the afterlife?
Is the final meal the last grasp at getting some earthly pleasure out of a life experience that has clearly gone wrong?
The prison spokesman says he has no interest in trying to interpret what the final comments and final meal of a condemned prisoner might mean.
So we are left to our own interpretation, which will tell us more about ourselves than it tells us about state executions, people who kill other people and what a whole pitcher of strawberry milkshake meant to a man facing the big injection.
