Oklahoma has higher per capita executions than Texas. I taught there, and that is how I came to read final meal requests in the morning paper. Art can be meditation. For me, the requests humanize each death row inmate. As a kid, I shared my family’s support of Nixon and capital punishment. Now I don’t. Education, cooking, gardening, service, and handwork were, and are, a part of each day. I admired family quilts and ukiyo-e prints in our Iowa home, and the neighbor’s yard with larger-than-life historical figures and a 20’ American flag made with ears of colored corn. Appreciation for homemade and handmade led me to paint blue food.

When you think of capital punishment in the U.S., you think of Texas. It has the largest number of executions, and for years, highly publicized final meals. Texas, home to those cattle ranches, didn’t allow steak. If you ordered steak, you got ground beef. In 2012, after one large meal was not consumed, they stopped the practice. Texas and Maryland are the only death penalty states that simply serve the standard prison meal. No alcohol, anywhere. Cigarettes are banned, but sometimes allowed. In states with options, most selections are modest. This is not surprising, as many are limited to what is in the prison kitchen. Others provide meals from local venues. California allows restaurant take-out, up to fifty-dollars. Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, and Long John Silver’s are frequently selected in Oklahoma, where their fifteen-dollar allowance is down from twenty in the late 1990’s. Requests provide clues on region, race, and economic background. A family history becomes apparent when Indiana Department of Corrections adds “he told us he never had a birthday cake so we ordered a birthday cake for him.”

The Last Supper illustrates the meal requests of U.S. death row inmates. Mineral paint is applied to second-hand plates, then kiln-fired by technical advisor Toni Acock. I plan to continue adding fifty plates a year until capital punishment is abolished. Why do we have this tradition of final meals, I wondered, after seeing a request for six tacos, six glazed donuts, and a cherry Coke. Fifteen years later, I still wonder.
Julie Green 2013

Death Penalty Information Center   19 December 2012    www.deathpenaltyinfo.org
Although the United States is considered a death penalty country, executions are rare or non-existent in much of the nation. Twenty-five of 53 jurisdictions in the U.S. (50 states, the District of Columbia, the Federal Government, and the Military) either do not have the death penalty or have not carried out an execution in at least 10 years.

1320 total U.S. state-sanctioned executions since 1976