Last Meals

The choice of the final meal contains a curious paradox: Why mark the end of a life with the stuff that fuels it?

The Afternoon Meal (La Merienda), by Luis Meléndez, c. 1772, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection.

By Brent Cunningham

I n January 1985, Pizza Hut aired a commercial in South Carolina that featured a condemned prisoner ordering delivery for his last meal. Two weeks earlier, the state had carried out its first execution in…