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.

After spending 31 years — 29 of them on death row — incarcerated for murder, Edward Elmore was freed on March 3, in large part due to investigations undertaken by Cornell law students and professors on the Cornell Death Penalty Project Council.

On Tuesday, Sep. 15, the state of Ohio was set to execute Rommell Broom, a man convicted of raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl 25 years ago. After two hours of poking and prodding, however, the technicians were unable to find a suitable vein where they could administer the lethal injection. Regardless of the cause, the end result was that the execution attempt failed and Broom walked out of the chamber under his own power, still breathing the same oxygen as the rest of us, his execution postponed by one week.