The bizarre reason Taylor Parker won’t get to choose a last meal on death row

Posts are flooding the internet saying that Maternal Instinct’s Taylor Parker won’t get a last death row meal, but why? Here’s a full explanation.

The new Netflix true crime documentary tells the story of Taylor Parker, who murdered expecting mother Reagan Simmons-Hancock and stole her unborn baby from her abdomen in a chilling crime that rocked Texas.

She committed the heinous murder after tricking her friends, family and own partner, Wade Griffin, into thinking she was expecting a baby for 10 months. She went to extreme lengths, doing a whole gender reveal and pregnancy photoshoots.

The 33-year-old is now on death row at the Patrick O’Daniel Unit after being found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death on 9th November 2022. The prison in Gatesville, Texas, only houses female prisoners.

She has been there for almost four years now, but it could be another decade before she is actually executed, to allow for the appeals process to take place. When she does face execution, she won’t get to choose a final meal.

Credit: Netflix

Why won’t Taylor Parker get a last death row meal?

Inmates on death row usually get to request a final meal to eat before they are given the death penalty, as a last act of compassion before they are killed. However, Taylor Parker won’t get this because she is on death row in Texas, and the state abolished this process after 87 years in 2011. That means no prisoner on death row in Texas will ever get a last meal.

The law change was implemented after a prisoner called Lawrence Russell Brewer asked for a huge meal and then didn’t eat any of it because he wasn’t hungry, The Guardian reported at the time.

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The white supremacist was executed for killing a man called James Byrd Jr in a 1998 race hate crime, and he ordered a huge final meal including two fried chicken steaks, a triple bacon cheeseburger, three fajitas, a meat pizza, a pint of ice cream and peanut butter fudge.

After he refused to eat any of the food, Democratic senator John Whitmire spoke out publicly against the tradition. He said: “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.”

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice heard his speech and just two hours later, they abolished the process of choosing a last meal on death row in Texas.

Brad Livingston, the executive director of the Texas Criminal Justice Department, said: “Effective immediately, no such accommodations will be made. They will receive the same meal served to other offenders on the unit. That had been Whitmire’s suggestion.”

In response, Whitmire replied: “It’s long overdue. This old boy last night, enough is enough. We’re fixing to execute the guy and maybe it makes the system feel good about what they’re fixing to do. Kind of hypocritical, you reckon? Mr Byrd didn’t get to choose his last meal. The whole deal is so illogical.”

Since then, no prisoner on death row in Texas has ever been offered a final death row meal, and it’s the only state that has completely abolished special meal requests.

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Featured image credit: Netflix