OKLAHOMA LAST MEAL
ERNEST CARTER
December 17, 2002

Last Man Served...the kitchen is closed for the year...

Last Meal: a deep-dish supreme pizza, 7-Up and one slice of cherry cheesecake.

The skinny: Carter was executed for firing a fatal shot into a night watchman's head so he could steal a $500 tow truck. Carter, who had been fired from the auction for sleeping on the job, crawled through a hole in a fence, cut the lights to the guard shack and killed so he could steal a wrecker,

Last Words and such.... "I'll be with you all on the other side," Carter said, smiling at his family and lifting his head from the gurney. "I'm going home now." His mother, sister and spiritual advisers strode into the execution viewing room singing "Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for my child."
As her son was dying, Carter's mother stood and walked toward the glass that separated them. Two guards gently took her arms and told her to sit.

"Please God, don't let this happen to no one else's child," she said after Carter was pronounced dead. "Spare the rest of the inmates, Lord. "His eyes might be closed, but he's not gone. He's tired of being accused of a crime he did not commit."

Backstage machinations...Carter's attorneys failed at a last-ditch plea for his life after Gov. Frank Keating denied the convicted killer clemency. They sent the governor a letter Monday asking him to reconsider last month's unanimous recommendation from the state Pardon and Parole Board to spare Carter's life.

It was the first time in more than 50 years that the board voted unanimously to recommend clemency for a condemned inmate.

Keating rejected the recommendations.

Factiods: Cartet was the seventh and last inmate executed in Oklahoma this year. Two executions are scheduled in January.

Carter is the 55th person executed in the state since Oklahoma reinstated the death penalty in 1977 and resumed executions in 1990.

In the 20 minutes before the execution, some of the 105 other inmates on death row banged on their cell doors and hollered - a show of respect for the condemned man.