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Death row inmates in Texas no longer get a final meal due to one man's very specific request as Christa Pike decision revealed
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The rules around final meals for death row inmates in Texas were changed following one man's request, as killer Christa Pike's decision for hers is revealed.
As previously reported, Pike, 50, is set to be executed today (September 30), over 30 years after the murder of Colleen Slemmer.
Pike was sentenced to death in March 1996 after admitting to the horrific murder of her 19-year-old Job Corps classmate.
Pike had become convinced that Slemmer was interested in her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and the pair - along with their friend, Shadolla Peterson, who acted as lookout - lured Slemmer to a secluded location where she was brutally beaten and killed.
Her body was later found with a pentagram carved into her chest, and her skull had been caved in with a piece of asphalt, with Pike reportedly keeping a piece of the skull and showing it off around the school.
She confessed to the killing and was sentenced to death, with her execution date finally set for September 30, 2026, in Tennessee.
Ahead of her execution, Pike had launched several appeals to halt it, all of which were denied.
It has also been revealed that Pike has reportedly declined to ask for a last meal, per WJHL11, which she would have been entitled to, per the Tennessee's death row rules.
Death row inmates in Texas, however, are no longer allowed to request a specific last meal after the actions of one man led to a change.
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, before they left his dead body to be found by members of the public the following day.
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.
However, when the extravagant request was fulfilled and presented to him, Brewer refused to take 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.
This wasteful act meant 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, and 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.