The final requests of death- row prisoners facing execution have often included large orders of pork chops, fried chicken and bucket loads of ice cream.
Never before has an inmate asked for his body to be turned into fish food and fed to goldfish, all in the name of art. But that is exactly what Gene Hathorn, a convicted murderer on death row in Texas, has pledged to do if his final appeal fails.
Hathorn, 47, who was convicted of killing his father, stepmother and stepbrother in 1985, has given his consent to Marco Evaristti to use his body as an "art installation" that contributes to a wider project on capital punishment. Mr Evaristti, 45, a Chilean-born artist who lives in Denmark, said he would first deep-freeze Hathorn's body and then turn it into fish food which visitors at the exhibition could feed to a shoal of goldfish.
