The Texas State Penitentiary. Also know as the Walls Unit and located in Huntsville Texas it is the oldest prison in Texas and the death penalty capital of the United States. It housed the electric chair that executed 362 death row inmates from 1924-1964, all male, before the Furman vs. Georgia US Supreme Court case. From 1982-onwards the Huntsville Unit deployed lethal injection and has executed almost 600 death row inmates.
In 2011 Lawrence Russell Brewer, one of the three neo-Nazi's who murdered James Byrd Jr. requested a large last meal, but refused to eat it. After he was executed by lethal injection the state of Texas discontinued this tradition and all death row inmates are now given what the inmates at the Huntsville Unit are eating for dinner that night with the option of water, tea or fruit punch to drink
by Viscount Druitt April 07, 2025