'When they stop serving last meals, we'll stop reporting it.' Oklahoma death row custom stirs debate

Along with informing readers last October that 60-year-old condemned inmate John Marion Grant was convicted of fatally stabbing a female prison staffer with a sharpened screwdriver, reporters dutifully noted his last meal request included Nutter Butter cookies and a 2-liter bottle of Mr. Pibb.

In December, reporters wrote that Bigler Jobe "Bud" Stouffer II, 79, who was put to death by lethal injection for the fatal shooting of a Putnam City elementary school teacher in 1985, didn't request a specific last meal. He was served a chicken sandwich, two slices of bread, chips, broccoli, mixed fruit, two biscuits, a fruit drink and one bottle of water.

And in February, the state executed 35-year-old convicted murderer Gilbert Ray Postelle for killing four people on Memorial Day 2005 outside a trailer in Del City. Reporters informed the public his last meal request included 20 chicken nuggets with various dipping sauces and a caramel frappe.

More: Oklahoma death row inmate James Coddington seeks execution stay

Reporting Oklahoma inmates' last meals comes under scrutiny as executions resume

As executions resumed in Oklahoma against the protests of those calling the practice unjust and uncivilized, journalists resumed a long-held reporting tradition that has come under scrutiny for trivializing crime and punishment. And just as many news organizations have rethought how they cover crime to present a fairer portrait of their communities, the media should be introspective about the purpose and presentation of last meal stories, journalism experts say.

“The reason to report it is because it happened and it happened with your dime and your sanction, and they are carrying out the wishes of the people of Oklahoma,” said Al Tompkins, a veteran broadcast journalist and senior faculty member at the nonprofit Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida. “When they stop serving last meals, we’ll stop reporting it.”

At least one victims’ advocate said the public’s fascination with last meals is the same as its fascination with deadly crimes.

“The victims’ side of it is — who gives a crap what they have for their last meal,” said Robbie Fullerton, whose mother was working as a laundress at the Helena State Training School for Boys in 1980 when an inmate fatally stabbed her. “People want to know about the gore and the blood and guts of the crime, so it’s just the final chapter.”

Indeed, researchers say the last meal is a millennia-old rite that has drawn interest from various societies throughout the ages.

Josh Ward, a former reporter who last fall took the job as public information manager at the Oklahoma State Department of Corrections, said some journalists seem disappointed the prison system doesn’t release last meal requests until the day of the execution.

The department doesn’t release last meal requests earlier because the execution may be delayed, or the food items requested with a $25 budget may not be available, Ward said.

Guest column: Oklahoma executions should stop until system is reformed

Providing the last meal request in a packet for reporters on the day of the execution ensures accuracy and is more efficient than returning phone calls, texts and emails from media members seeking the information, Ward said.

“Something like that is so tweetable,” he said. “It’s instant news. You see it on days when media come to the media room. They'll get the packet and take a picture of it with their phone, and within a minute it's on Twitter. I’m not sure what the fascination is with it, but it is a matter of public record, and we keep those records.”

A public appetite for grim details of justice

Several years ago, when he was deputy editor of Columbia Journalism Review, Brent Cunningham published at Lapham’s Quarterly a piece about the history of last meals.

The wide-ranging article touched on last meals from the Lord’s Supper to Timothy McVeigh’s request for mint chocolate chip ice cream.

As the conversation about criminal justice evolved in modern societies, punishments moved from public floggings and hangings to long-term prison sentences where criminals were put out of public view, and executions carried out behind prison walls and witnessed by a select few people.

However, Cunningham told The Oklahoman, the public maintained its appetite for the grim details of justice. With the advent of widely circulated newspapers in the early 19th century, reporters fed readers with execution accounts.

More: Oklahoma sets execution dates for 25 death row inmates through end of 2024

“It’s understandable on one hand,” said Cunningham, now executive editor of The Food & Environment Reporting Network. “We all eat what we choose to eat or not to eat. It is a very intimate thing, and we read a lot into it in terms of who that person is and what they value, and it just became this little titillating aspect of a really gruesome, scary thing. A lot of people were drawn to and fascinated by it, and as the media world broadened beyond newspapers, it became ever more salacious.”

Still today, Cunningham said, media reports of last meal requests sometimes resemble a carnival exhibit or sideshow.

“I just wish that the coverage of this stuff were less about ‘God, look at this,’ and more through the lens of taking it seriously as a subject and trying to understand it and write about it in a way that reflects humanity,” he said. “It’s a sphere of humanity in an utterly dehumanized environment.”

The humanizing element of the last meal ritual might contribute to the state’s justification of executions and public support for the practice, one researcher said.

“It represents a kind of way making the violence of the state look more virtuous, more civilized, more humane and not the kind of dirty violence of the murderers the state is punishing,” Daniel LaChance, a history professor at Emory University in Atlanta, said.

While condemned individuals become institutionalized and forgotten by the public as real people with unique personalities, their choice of last meal reveals something of their character, from simply eating what is on the prison menu that day, to requesting extravagant feasts.

LaChance argues the act of choosing also portrays a condemned person as an autonomous agent, capable of decision-making, which has the effect of showing him to the public, without regard to his upbringing, socio-economic status and mental health, as a free moral agent who willfully committed his gruesome crime.

“There’s a way in which by highlighting the last meal and last words, the irony is it serves a retributive purpose,” LaChance said. “It shows the public this person is very much alive and has something to lose. They are losing their lives and the ability to do things people do — plan for the future and consume food according to their taste. And the state engages in these rituals to remind us these are people who deserve what they are getting.”

Also, LaChance said, media reports of last meal requests stir up pro-death penalty and tough-on-crime passions.

LaChance suggested the more lavish the food request, the angrier people become, as the death row inmate appears to have the state serve him, and some taxpayers ask:

“How dare you insist on a customized meal request. Look how you took this life?”

More: 61 lawmakers ask Okla. Attorney General O'Connor to back Glossip's request for new hearing

Journalistic duty, or morbid curiosity?

For Tompkins, the broadcast journalist, the relevance of a last meal story might rest in the mind of the news consumer.

It may reveal the death row inmate’s state of mind — how seriously is he taking what he did and what is about to happen to him? Is his choice seen by some readers as a final poke in the eye to society — a celebration paid for by the state?

“I think you could at least argue that publishing these kinds of things trivializes the larger issue that you're about to to take a human life here,” Tompkins said. “That's a serious consideration, whether this is a time for trivial details, and I think this is a trivial detail. It makes no real, human, common sense except that it's just theater.”

Still, Tompkins said, journalists are tasked with reporting the state’s activities. And citizens might ask how they would feel if news organizations didn’t report last meal requests.

Asked about the perception among some in the public that last meal stories are simply clickbait, Tompkins said:

“Remember what you’re dealing with. You're dealing with the state's decision to kill this person and that’s pretty serious. I’m fine if it doesn’t get clicks, because I was factual and thorough. And if I didn’t write a snappy headline for this one, I’m fine with not getting clicks for that. I would say get your clicks some other place. This is a human life.”

Fullerton, who lost her mother to murder, does not buy into journalism discussions or academic theorizing about humanizing death row inmates.

“I don’t think people want to hear about their humanity,” she said. “They just want blood and guts, and they’re just curious.”

If reporters and their audiences cared about the human aspect of deadly crimes, more time would be spent learning about victims, perhaps even their last meals, Fullerton said.

People with a deep interest in the last meals of murderers likely haven’t been directly impacted by such violence, Fullerton suggested.

“The victims that I’ve sat with that viewed the execution, every one of them wanted the inmate to say ‘I’m sorry’ and they don’t get that,” Fullerton said. “They don’t care about what he ate. They care about why he did this, and the majority of the time they don’t get that.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Last meals for executed inmates in Oklahoma comes under scrutiny