ALABAMA LAST MEAL
JAMES HUBBARD
August 5, 2004

...Pineapple slices with...mayonnaise?...

Last Meal: For his last meal, Hubbard asked for two eggs over medium, four pieces of bacon, fried green tomatoes, sliced red tomatoes, four slices of pineapple with mayonnaise, white bread, a banana, and a medium-sized V-8 juice.

The skinny: Hubbard, 74, who spent 26 years and nearly two months on death row, was executed for the 1977 slaying of a 62-year-old Tuscaloosa store owner.

Hubbard maintained his innocence of the crime to the end.

Hubbard said he had been drinking whiskey with the victim and claimed she committed suicide, calling the police to report the shooting. She died as the result of three gunshot wounds, one to the face, one to the head, and one to the shoulder. A difficult accomplishment as a suicide.

Priors: His conviction happened within 20 years of a second-degree murder conviction in a 1957 death. He was released on the state's "good time incentive act" in 1976 and killed again the next year.

Last days: Hubbard spent his time reading and watching television. He didn't exercised outside, but he participated in a prison religious group.

At least 15 visitors came to see Hubbard in his last two days, including his daughter and his spiritual adviser.

Last words and such: Hubbard offered no last words.

Factoids: Hubbard became the oldest person ever to be executed by the state of Alabama and the oldest executed in the United States since 1976, the year the death penalty was reinstated.

Hubbard is the oldest person executed in the United States since 1941, when James Stephens of Colorado was executed at age 76.

Bill Hayes, a Florida-based capital punishment historian, said Hubbard will be the oldest by far in the current series of executions that date to 1976. He said 24 inmates in their 60s have been executed nationwide in that period.

Hayes said the oldest person executed in the 20th century was 83-year-old Joe Lee of Virginia in 1916, but Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections in that state, said Lee's actual age was in dispute and he may have been 68. But there have been at least 16 others in their 70s and 80s executed, according to Hayes' research.

Arizona apparently has the nation's oldest inmate on death row - 88-year-old Viva Leroy Nash.

Hubbard was the....

37th murderer executed in U.S. in 2004
922nd murderer executed in U.S. since 1976
1st murderer executed in Alabama in 2004
29th murderer executed in Alabama since 1976