Today's New York Times Asked and Answered feature is, "Ex-Inmate Shares Stories of Stint as a Death Row Chef." The interview with Brian Price is conducted by Timothy Williams. Here's an excerpt:
Last month, Texas prison officials decided to end the tradition of special meals for inmates facing execution after Lawrence Russell Brewer, 44, requested a large dinner before his Sept. 21 lethal injection. Mr. Brewer, a white supremacist gang member, had been convicted of chaining James Byrd, Jr., a 49-year-old black man, to a pickup truck and dragging him along a road until he died. As his final meal, Mr. Brewer had requested a pound of barbecue with half a loaf of white bread; three fajitas “with fixings”; a cheese omelet with “ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapenos”; two chicken fried steaks “smothered in gravy with sliced onions”; a “triple meat” bacon cheeseburger with “fixings on the side”; a “large bowl” of fried okra; a “meat lovers” pizza; a pint of vanilla ice cream; a “slab” of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts; and three root beers. He was given some of the items, in smaller portions, but ate nothing. After the state’s decision, Brian D. Price, 60, a former inmate who as jailhouse chef cooked last meals for 218 prisoners on death row in Huntsville, Tex., offered to prepare meals for the condemned for free. Texas said thanks but no thanks. Mr. Price discusses:
QUESTION How did you get started cooking last meals for death row inmates?
ANSWER In 1989, I was sent to prison for assaulting my ex-wife and kidnapping my brother-in-law. I was sentenced to 15 years, and when I first arrived at the prison at the Walls Unit, they asked what I was doing in the free world as a profession. I was a professional bass player in rock bands and a professional photographer. When I relayed that to them, they just laughed. They said, “Well, there’s nothing like that here, boy.” So the warden looked over at the head of the steward’s department and said, “Put him in the kitchen.” And that’s how I got in the kitchen. On the dinner shift, or supper — which is what we call it down this way — we’re the ones who prepared the last meals because executions took place there at the Walls Unit. My friend, a four-star chef who was doing last meals at the time, didn’t want to do them any more. He wanted me to take over. I didn’t have any desire to do so at that point in time. But about a year later, my friend, Terry, the four-star chef, he wasn’t around, so I told the sarge that I’d do it, so I went ahead and did it to the best of my ability at what we had at our means. And so, the next day sarge called me into his office and said, “Hey Price, that guy they killed last night sent a word of thanks to the chaplain over here and said he appreciated what you did. He really liked it.” That blew me away. I went back to my cell that night, and I really reflected upon it and that was probably the last thanks that guy gave anyone before he left this world. And so the next day I went back in and told Terry, “I’ll do the last meals if you want to go ahead and back out.”
Q. Do prisoners actually get what they request?
A. The Texas Department of Corrections has a policy that no matter what the request, it has to be prepared from items that’s in the prison kitchen commissary. And, like if they requested lobster, they’d get a piece of frozen pollock. Just like they would normally get on a Friday, but what I’d do is wash the breading off, cut it diagonally and dip it in a batter so that it looked something like at Long John Silver’s — something from the free world, something they thought they were getting, but it wasn’t. They quit serving steaks in 1994, so whenever anyone would request a steak, I would do a hamburger steak with brown gravy and grilled onions, you know, stuff like that. The press would get it as they requested it, but I would get their handwritten last meal request about three days ahead of time and I’d take it to my captain and say, “Well, what do you want me to do?” And she’d lay it out for me. I tried to do the best I could with what I had. Amazingly, we did pretty well with what we did have. They are served two hours before they are executed and it is no longer a burger and fries or a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich or whatever they requested. All it is, two hours later, is stomach content on an autopsy report.
Q. What do you think about the decision to do away with special last meal requests?
A. It’s politically motivated. They waited for a heinous crime — the most heinous one in years here in Texas, first off — and then someone who ordered a lot of food, which they do that quite often anyhow. And they decided to stop the last meal request and give them what was on the line for that day. What raised the fur on my back was — how can one person do this? The State of Texas sends these people to the death chamber. It’s up to the folks of Texas if they want to stop a tradition, an age-old tradition. One or two men shouldn’t have the stroke of power to do that. What I’m trying to get across is to take this to the Legislature and put it to a vote. If the taxpayers want to stop last meal requests and show a calloused heart — but I truly believe it’s going to be turned around and they’ll reinstate the last meal request. No, these people don’t deserve a last meal request, but we as a society have to show that softer side, that compassion. It’s bad enough that we have the death penalty, it’s so archaic, but then to turn around and say, “No, we’re not going to feed you,” just out of pure meanness or something. I don’t know. We have to show that we are not distorting that justice with revenge.
Earlier coverage of the new TDCJ policy on last meals begins at the link. Price is author of the prison cookbook Meals to Die For.
Comments