The quiet final hours of a condemned man typically involve a heavy plate of comfort food and a priest. But in May 1979, inside the grim walls of Florida State Prison, a single bottle of Tennessee whiskey sparked a public relations firestorm that forever stripped alcohol from the menu of the state’s death row.
Today, a Florida inmate can request almost anything within reason for their final meal, but they cannot ask for a drink. The reason for that strict prohibition traces back to John Spenkelink—a convicted killer whose execution not only resurrected the state’s death penalty after a 15-year hiatus but also pushed prison administrators into a deeply controversial ethical corner.
A Brutal Crime and a Rusty System
Spenkelink, 30, was sentenced to death for the brutal 1973 slaying of Joseph Szymankiewicz inside a Tallahassee motel room. The details of the crime were stark: Spenkelink shot Szymankiewicz twice before striking him in the head with a hatchet. In court, Spenkelink claimed self-defense, alleging that the victim had held him at gunpoint, forced him to perform a sexual act, and coerced him into playing a terrifying game of Russian roulette.
The jury didn’t buy it. By 1979, Spenkelink’s legal appeals had run dry.
However, as his execution date loomed, prison officials realized they had a logistical nightmare on their hands. Florida had not executed a prisoner since 1964. The state’s electric chair, known ominously as “Old Sparky,” had sat dormant for a decade and a half, and the prison staff had absolutely no firsthand experience operating it.
“We had to start from scratch and rely on people’s memories,” Richard Dugger, who was then the assistant superintendent of Florida State Prison, later admitted to reporters.
The immense pressure of reviving the machinery of death weighed heavily on both sides of the bars. Prison superintendent Dave Brierton recalled the suffocating atmosphere of those final days. “It was a very difficult time for Spenkelink. It was a very difficult time for me,” Brierton said. “It was the loss of a human life.”
The Bottle of Jack Daniel’s
Desperate to soothe the condemned man’s visible terror as the final hours ticked away, Brierton and his staff brainstormed ways to take the edge off Spenkelink’s anxiety. They initially considered sedatives, but ultimately rejected pharmaceutical intervention.
Instead, Brierton made an unorthodox, highly personal decision: he offered Spenkelink a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
Dugger later defended the decision in an interview with United Press International (UPI), explaining the raw humanity behind the choice.
“It seemed like a way to maybe calm the fellow down before he was supposed to go to the chair,” Dugger said. “We talked about tranquilizers, but we didn’t feel drugs were appropriate. Maybe you would say alcohol is a drug, I don’t know. We asked Spenkelink if he wanted a drink, and he said, ‘Sure.’”
Spenkelink drank the whiskey, walked into the execution chamber, and became the first man executed in Florida’s modern death penalty era.
The Backlash that Rewrote the Rules
When the public learned that a man who had used a gun and a hatchet to end a life had been sent into eternity with a premium bottle of liquor courtesy of the state, the backlash was swift and fierce. Citizens and politicians alike expressed outrage, arguing that providing alcohol to a condemned murderer was a bizarre, offensive privilege that insulted the memory of the victim.
The political heat grew so intense that Florida Department of Corrections officials were forced to completely overhaul the execution protocol. They permanently banned alcohol from the last meal request list, establishing a dry policy that remains strictly enforced to this day.
Interestingly, Spenkelink’s final drink broke a dry spell in more ways than one. Prior to his bottle of Jack Daniel’s, the last Florida inmate permitted to consume alcohol before an execution was a man named Manuel Fernandez—all the way back in 1835. On his way to the gallows, Fernandez was granted a single “nip of brandy” and a few puffs on a cigar.
Thanks to John Spenkelink, he will remain the last.