THE LAST WORD
Pollak, Felix
THE LAST WORD Request denied Felix Pollak Steven T. Judy, the twenty-four-year-old convicted murderer who died in the electric chair shortly after midnight on March 9,1981, ordered steak with...
...THE LAST WORD Request denied Felix Pollak Steven T. Judy, the twenty-four-year-old convicted murderer who died in the electric chair shortly after midnight on March 9,1981, ordered steak with lobster tails for his last meal...
...Felix Pollak is a poet and the retired curator of rare books at the University of Wisconsin Memorial Library...
...Is there a better, more plausible explanation...
...The Henkersmahlzeit, the final meal for those condemned to be burned at the stake, beheaded, hanged, shot, gassed, or electrocuted, is an ancient tradition, and all reports of it I've ever read or heard about encompassed drink as well as food...
...I could well imagine that the Indiana executioners, frustrated over having been maneuvered by their intended victim into the role of accomplices in his plan to commit suicide, felt a surge of satisfaction when they saw a last-minute opportunity to restore their shaken authority...
...I could not help but wonder why...
...In fact, he actually demanded of his prospective executioners that they hurry up and get on with the job...
...Did the authorities feel they had to draw the line somewhere"} That phrase has a certain familiar ring, the drawing of lines being a* favorite pastime for most authorities...
...As is customary, the request was granted...
...Despite the urgings of his ACLU attorneys, he declined to ask for clemency...
...What reason could there possibly be for denying such a modest last wish...
...And so they were able to teach him the final lesson to take with him into that questionable Hereafter: that even the most cynical criminal may not be cynical enough for the world of the just in which he lives...
...Like Gary Gilmore and a few others before him, Judy refused to struggle...
...Isn't it conceivable that prison officials found his attitude irritating, to say the least...
...But when he asked, in addition, for four cans of cold beer, the Indiana penitentiary authorities turned him down...
...Some inhabitants of death row might even ask for a final fling of licit or illicit sex— the potential outrages stagger the imagination...
...Or could there be more to it than that...
...But then murderers, too, are often flawed and unsatisfactory characters, insensitive and grossly materialistic, and in general prone to disappoint the great expectations we have of them...
...Touching as such a symbolic clinging to life and its pleasures may be, I am at a loss to understand why any condemned man or woman would want to eat or drink anything before facing the executioners...
...What I find curious in this episode is the fact that Steven Judy, admittedly guilty of the brutal crimes for which he was condemned, was yet innocent enough to give his executioners an opportunity to salve their damaged egos and "get even" with him...
...And where might it all end...
...For one foolish moment, he was naive enough to trust them: He asked for four cold beers...
...His careless request for four cans of beer gave them the chance to have a last triumphant chuckle at his expense: Request denied...
...He would rather be dead, he insisted, than spend the rest of his life in prison...
...Perhaps the unorthodox attitude of the condemned man toward his imminent execution offers a clue...
...In some respects, they closely resemble the guardians of law and order, who are also rarely characterized by greatness of spirit and generosity of heart...
...Where would we be, after all, if everyone about to die in the electric chair could drink himself or herself into a terminal stupor at government expense...
...No, that sort of thing clearly had to be nipped in the bud...
...Must that not take the fun out of the whole thing for the cat—and make it, indeed, quite pointless for the cat to be a cat at all...
...Picture a cat that has caught a live mouse and is about to play its time-honored game with it when the mouse suddenly refuses to play—that is, to struggle...
Vol. 45 • May 1981 • No. 5
