I read "Dead Man Walking" over two years ago. That caused me to think about, off and on, what I would choose as a last meal. I could not come up with a definitive answer until recently.

Chili cheese tater tots, Cherry Limeade and a Cherry Chocolate Blizzard. My last meal would be fast food. Yes, I'm an American.

This whole last meal thing lead to other questions. Do the prison officials let the condemned go to the bathroom if necessary?

When I've eaten the food listed above the consequences have been quite explosive. When it hits me, I have to go pretty damn quickly. Drop everything get to the bathroom.

What if that happened to someone on the way to the death chamber? Would he/she be allowed to go?

One answer is that the person being executed committed a crime so heinous that the state decided that they no longer deserved to live and by extension do not deserve the dignity of wearing clean underpants nor be spared from the suffering of holding it in and the distraction.

On the other hand, someone else will have to cleanup the mess when the executed person loses muscle control. That is not justice.

Despite the crimes the person committed, they do deserve some ounce of dignity before being put to death. They did not grant that dignity to their victim(s) but we, the people represented by the state, should not sink as low as the perpetrator. We are supposed to be better. At least, that is what we like to tell ourselves as we avoid questioning the whole process in the first place.