World affairs

We don’t like to admit it but we us modern men do occasionally worry about our weight... but this takes (and eats) the biscuit.

By Brian Moss

You’ve got to love those Yanks. They do throw up the most bizarre stories and we here at JOE are more than happy to catch them on your behalf!

So you’re on death row and your day of reckoning is fast approaching, lists of things you are probably worried about might include life and death, heaven and hell, remorse for your victims, how your family and friends will cope once you snuffed it... etc. But pretty low down on your check list would be your weight, right? Well if your name is Ronald Post and you’re an inmate in an Ohio prison you’d be wrong!

Yes Mr Post (name sounds all too friendly for a convicted murderer) is attempting to have his exit form this mortal coil – bit of Shakespeare there for the college kids - delayed on the grounds that he is to fat. It’s claimed that Post, who weighs over 480lbs (about 25 stone in old money), would experience a slow, lingering and torturous death due to him being, em, so big boned.

According to his lawyers ‘Vein access, scar tissue and other medical problems raise the likelihood his executioners would encounter severe problems. He's also so big that the execution gurney might not hold him’.

Post was convicted of murder after shooting dead a hotel clerk in northern Ohio in 1983. Apparently he’s also wanted in connection with several hundred cases of ‘who ate all the pies’. He’s spent almost 30 years on death row which is a insanely long amount of time behind bars. We don’t know how he passed the time but we think we can safely rule out any form of exercising. On the plus side he was probably pretty safe in the prison showers...

All joking aside, weight can be an issue in executions. In 2007, it took Ohio executioners about two hours to insert IVs into the veins of condemned inmate Christopher Newton, who weighed about 265 pounds.

A prison spokeswoman at the time said his size was an issue - so size does matter then...

Apparently Post has tried to lose weight in the past whilst at the Mansfield Correctional Institution, but sadly broke the prison bike. We bet he was really trying to shed the pounds there.

Still though it’s probably one of the few cases where exercising and losing weight could actually be really bad for your health!