A man who was on death row in Texas is the sole reason why other inmates in the state are no longer offered a final meal request.
Russell Brewer, 44, was sentenced to death for the brutal 1998 killing of James Byrd Jr., a Black man who was tortured and then chained by his ankles to the back of a pickup truck and dragged for three miles.
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice: "Brewer and his co-defendants then dragged the victim to his death, leaving his decapitated and dismembered body to be found the following day by citizens and law enforcement officials," as cited by The Mirror.
The crime shocked the nation and led to sweeping hate crime legislation. Brewer and John William King were convicted of capital murder and sent to death row, becoming the first white men in Texas to receive the death penalty for killing a Black man.
Their actions were partly tied to affiliations with white supremacist groups like the Confederate Knights of America and the Ku Klux Klan, per the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Shawn Allen Berry, also involved in the crime, received a life sentence.
Before his execution on September 21, 2011, Brewer made headlines with an outrageous final meal request.
It included two chicken fried steaks, fried okra with ketchup, a cheese omelet with ground beef, jalapenos, and bell peppers.
He added a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, three fajitas with all the trimmings, one pound of barbecue, a half loaf of white bread, a meat lover’s pizza, one pint of vanilla ice cream, a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts, and three root beers.
But what really rubbed law officials up the wrong way was that they obliged the request, all for Brewer to refuse to eat a single bite.
When asked if he had any final words, Brewer replied: "No. I have no final statement," and was pronounced dead at 6:21PM via lethal injection.
That stunt infuriated lawmakers.
Texas Senator John Whitmire immediately took action, writing to the executive director of the Texas Criminal Justice Division: "Enough is enough... it is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege. It's a privilege which the perpetrator did not provide to their victim," per the BBC.
His words were echoed again: "It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege."
The executive director agreed. The 87-year-old tradition of granting final meal requests was permanently scrapped. From that point forward, no death row inmate in Texas would be granted a last meal of their choosing.
For the family of James Byrd Jr., Brewer’s execution marked a moment of painful closure.
Clara Taylor, Byrd’s sister, said: "Hopefully, today we have been reminded that racial hatred and prejudice can lead to tragic consequences for both the victim and his family, as well as the perpetrator and his family. Our sincere condolences to the family of Lawrence Brewer."
The victim’s two sisters and a niece called the execution “the next step to total justice for James,” as cited by Reuters.