Even if you’re going to be executed, it’s not a good idea to make a pig of yourself, at least in Texas. You just mess it up for everybody else.

Texas has stopped the practice of giving condemned prisoners a last meal of their request.

The state recently executed Lawrence Russell Brewer for the 1998 killing of James Byrd Jr. The case was notorious; Brewer and two other white supremacists dragged Byrd behind a pickup.

For his last meal, Brewer requested two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover’s pizza, a pint of ice cream and a hunk of peanut butter fudge (with crushed peanuts). Then he didn’t eat any of it.

That, of course, made a state senator cranky. He wrote a letter of complaint to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which forthwith decreed that condemned prisoners will now eat what everybody else on death row gets that day.

It’s grimly funny. The closest word to describe Brewer accurately is an anatomical epithet I can’t use and it’s true in ways both large (a horrific murder) and small (ordering enough food to feed the entire nation of Somalia and then not touching it). Of course, when you’re on the express train to hell, you probably don’t worry about committing the extra sin of wasting food.

Me, I would’ve ordered a blood-rare steak, mashed potatoes, corn and pecan pie a la mode (vanilla). And I would’ve eaten every morsel. Not that I’ve thought about it much.

Brewer’s little escapade was an amusing sidelight on a not-terribly-amusing topic that was much in the news over the last couple of weeks. Georgia put Troy Davis to death for a murder he may or may not have committed. Seven of the nine witnesses against him had either recanted or changed their stories and by the time Davis was strapped to the gurney, he had become something of a worldwide cause celebre. As much attention as his case got, the execution went on.

At the same time, Rick Perry’s presidential campaign is being dogged by accusations that he signed off on the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, whom many people believe was almost certainly innocent.

Cases like Davis’ and Willingham’s always put those of us who favor the death penalty in an odd position. It’s hard to argue against one of the main principles of the American justice system, that it’s better to let a guilty person go free than to punish an innocent one. And when it comes to the death penalty, that principle has to be sacred.

But one can still favor the death penalty and be appalled at the way it’s done. The system stinks. For everybody. The appeals process stretches it out so long that most condemned killers live on long after their victims are dust. If justice delayed is justice denied, no execution has ever been just. And for the condemned whose cases betray real doubt of guilt, the system marches inexorably toward death regardless of actual guilt.

But still, there are reasons to keep the death penalty. I don’t believe it’s a deterrent or anything like that. I just think it’s simple justice.

There are people that simply need to be taken out of society because they are dangerous in the most extreme way. Just locking them away won’t do it; they’ll be a constant threat to guards or other prisoners or, God forbid they somehow escape, the public. They lack even the most basic governor that keeps most people from hitting others, much less killing others. They are not just twisted and malformed, they want to act on it. They don’t just have to. They want to.

If you doubt that, read up on John Wayne Gacy. I’ve made an amateur study of evil for years and for my money, there was none worse than Gacy. I once read a book by two guys who really got into his head and believe me, that isn’t a place you want to spend any more time than necessary. And hell, Gacy’s original motive for murder was pretty rational; he’d done time for molestation and wanted to guarantee that nobody he molested later would ever be around to testify against him. Of course, added to that rational motive was the kind of black-hole soul that made him bury more than a score of bodies in the crawlspace of his home.

That said, the way the death penalty system works now is anything but just. But it’s a system that can be fixed. It can be fixed by being sharply restricted. There are all kinds of ideas on how to do that. It could be restricted to murders and further, murders where the evidence is pretty much indisputable. That’s possible with DNA evidence. Even eyewitness testimony, which all cops and reporters know is deeply unreliable, shouldn’t be enough by itself to make a person ride the thunderbolt.

And for God’s sake, nobody should cheer an execution. That’s just wrong. An execution always is the result of tragedy. If an innocent person is put to death, that only doubles and redoubles the tragedy.

In fact, I have an admittedly odd proposal: I think executions should be televised. If the state – that’s us, folks – is going to put people to death, we ought to be willing to have it pushed in our faces. If we hide from it, we don’t really know what we’re arguing about. Nobody who favors capital punishment ever should be allowed to say they wouldn’t watch one.

That won’t happen, though. And the reforms noted above probably won’t either, because the death penalty only enters the public consciousness when there’s a case like Davis’. It’s a kind of cowardice. That’s not as bad as murder, but it’s certainly nothing to be proud of.