Senator John Whitmire wants Texas to stop reading the last words of the prisoners sentenced to death

Austin, Texas – A Texan legislator whose anger after the grand final feast of inmates sentenced to death in 2011 ended the practice of convicts choosing their last meal said Monday that the state should stop publicly reading the final statements of people executed.

This comes after a Texas prison spokesman last week read the last words of a racist said, John William King, which orchestrated one of the most gruesome hate crimes in US history.

King, who was white, was executed for the late 1998 death of James Byrd Jr., a black man. King answered "no" to the request of a guardian, inside the country's busiest death chamber, though he wanted to say something before receiving a lethal injection. But a statement prepared by King was published after his execution.

"If a death row inmate has something to say to the public or to the victims, let him say it when he is caught off guard," said Senator John Whitmire in a letter to the prison officials.

A spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Whitmire has been in the Senate for almost 40 years. The Houston Democrat is one of Texas' most powerful lawmakers on the criminal justice system and has prompted the penitentiary system to modify the procedures of the day of execution.

Texas death row inmates no longer choose their last meal after Whitmire has expressed outrage at the request of another man convicted for the murder of Byrd. Lawrence Russell Brewer ordered a final full meal in 2011. It included two chicken steaks, a triple meat bacon cheeseburger, a fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a pizza for meat lovers, a pint of ice cream and a peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts. Prison officials said Brewer had not eaten anything.

King is not the first Texas convict not to utter a final word but to prepare a statement issued later by the penitentiary system. King's statement read as follows: "Capital punishment: those who, without the capital, are punished."

Byrd's sister, Clara Taylor, who saw King die, said he "did not show any remorse at the time nor any remorse tonight".