As prisoners on death row live out their final hours –– and choose their last meals –– they are far more likely to ask for a burger and fries than a Caesar salad, according to a study by Cornell researchers posted online this week in the journal Appetite.

AJ Ortiz explains the injustice often caused by the death penalty.

Lucas Yannis '13 argues that the death penalty violates Americans' Fifth Amendment right to due process. 

Shaun Werbelow '11 talks about the development on his take on the death penalty.

By Kate Rykken

Over the next five weeks, 10 prisoners face the death penalty in Texas. Their crimes include the murders of an eleven-year-old girl, a sleeping elderly man, a middle-aged widow, and the rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl. Regardless of where these crimes were committed, they are heinous and incomprehensible. Yet, a person committing these same crimes in New York would instead spend the rest of his life in jail. Texas sentences and executes its prisoners at a rate that far outpaces every other state in the United States, while New York has outlawed the death penalty.

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush on Monday approved the execution of an Army private, administration officials said. It was the first time in over a half-century that a president has affirmed a death sentence for a member of the U.S. military.

With his signature from the Oval Office, Bush said yes to the military's request to execute Ronald A. Gray, said the officials, who revealed his decision only on grounds of anonymity. Gray had had been convicted in connection with a spree of four murders and eight rapes in the Fayetteville, N.C., area over eight months in the late 1980s while stationed at Fort Bragg.