Lawrence Russell Brewer’s actions led to a permanent change in how Texas handles death row inmates’ final moments. For nearly a century, it was tradition in Texas for death row inmates to request a last meal of their choice. It was seen as a small gesture of humanity before someone faced execution. This tradition began in 1924 and continued for decades without major issues—until Brewer came along.
Brewer was convicted for one of the most horrific hate crimes in American history. In 1998, he and two other men murdered James Byrd Jr., a Black man, by chaining him to the back of a pickup truck and dragging him for miles along a rural road in Jasper, Texas. The crime shocked the nation with its brutality. Brewer and John King were sentenced to death for the murder, and Shawn Berry, the third man involved, received a life sentence.
When Brewer’s execution date came in 2011, he made a huge request for his last meal. The list was shocking: fried okra with ketchup, two chicken-fried steaks smothered in gravy and onions, a cheese omelet with ground beef, jalapeños, and bell peppers, a triple meat bacon cheeseburger, three fajitas, a full pound of barbecued meat, half a loaf of white bread, a meat lover’s pizza, a pint of Blue Bell homemade vanilla ice cream, a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts, and three root beers. The meal was carefully prepared and presented to him.
But Brewer didn’t eat a single bite. When asked why, he told prison staff he wasn’t hungry. This caused outrage. Many saw it as an insult—not just to the staff who prepared the food, but to the justice system as a whole. It looked like he had deliberately made an exaggerated request just to waste time and resources. Some believed he was mocking the very system that was about to end his life.
John Whitmire, a Texas state senator at the time, was furious. He said Brewer had turned the process into a joke. Whitmire acted quickly, contacting the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and demanding that the practice be stopped immediately. He believed taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for what had clearly become a way for condemned inmates to play games with the system. As a result, Texas ended the last meal tradition on the spot. Since then, death row inmates in Texas receive the same standard meal as everyone else in prison on the day of their execution. They no longer get to choose.
Brewer’s case wasn’t the only one raising eyebrows. Just days before his execution, another inmate, Steven Woods, made an even more over-the-top last meal request. Woods, who was executed on September 13, 2011, ordered a full kilogram of bacon, a four-meat pizza, four fried chicken breasts, five chicken-fried steaks, two bacon hamburgers on French toast, French fries, twelve garlic breadsticks with marinara sauce, a pint of ice cream, and a mix of drinks including two Pepsis, two root beers, two sweet teas, and two Mountain Dews.
These elaborate requests were beginning to look less like meaningful final moments and more like stunts. The backlash grew, and Brewer’s stunt was the final push needed to change the rules. Today, Texas is known for having one of the strictest death penalty policies in the country, and the ban on special last meals has remained firmly in place for over a decade. The policy shift all traces back to one man who ordered a massive meal, then refused to take even a single bite.
