Sybil Bruncheon's "True Crime Confidential!"... Cruel & Inedible Punishment...

It has just been revealed through recently discovered files that America's justice system may have been involved in brutal, even barbaric experimentation in its prisons. Death penalty controversies have been a hot topic ever since the first implementation of the electric chair back in 1890. The arguments both for and against hanging, the gas chamber, the electric chair, and the firing squad have gone on and on... and people have argued as to why the method of execution should be humane at all. After all, weren't the victims of murder killed horribly, perhaps after an extended time of fear and torture. Why should a murderer be treated with any respect or consideration at all?

But now, it was revealed that the more blood-thirsty of the legal authorities and death penalty proponents actually proposed another more terrifying method... the use of Spam and Jello. Instead of a "final request meal" of the prisoner's choice being given to the condemned, they would be force-fed a hideous recipe from the Ladies' Luncheon chapter of the Pillsbury Happy Homemakers Cook Book, or a Perky Picnic Party Treat from Betty Crocker. Additional ingredients in various recipes included, carrot shavings, celery bits, mini-marshmallows, assorted seeds and nuts, slivers of cabbage slaw, and bits of cold cuts, olives, pineapple, cantaloupe, peppers, onions, gherkins both sweet or sour, and of various cheeses both imported and domestic. Layering with mayonnaise was an additional option... along with garnishes of ice berg lettuce.

On the day of execution, the convicted man (or woman!) would be escorted to the death chamber. He would be surrounded by witnesses and reporters seated at small café tables, perhaps with little bud-vases or votive candles. But he might be filled with terror at the first sight of the hideous dish even as it was wheeled into the death cell by the prison chef and the wait-staff. Often the prisoners would beg, bargain, or plead, shrieking in terror and praying as they were dragged over to the small enamel table on its squeaky iron wheels. Then the bent prison-issue fork would be wedged into the condemned's trembling hands and the death-napkin tucked under his gibbering chin. It might take four or five burly guards to subdue him and force him to take the first mouthful... oh, horrible! HORRIBLE!... the drooled chewing, the reluctant swallowing, the mumbled gagging, or the gagging mumbles... whatever... only to be followed again and again... and again... until finally... the struggling and the whimpering... stopped. Silence. And the death chamber looking like a sweet little restaurant, perhaps in Greenwich Village or in a charming little back-alley in Poka-Ma-Hola, Idaho.... except with a gurney, a medical examiner, and a body slumped over at table 13... with a heart-shaped and quivering, nearly finished Be-My-Valentine Egg & Spam Surprise.

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