Author Discusses Capital Punishment

Two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States (the basis of the 1995 film Dead Man Walking), spoke of her experiences counseling Louisiana State Penitentiary death-row inmates during an October visit to campus. An ardent opponent of capital punishment, Prejean has worked with death-row prisoners since establishing her ministry in 1981. She has accompanied five prisoners to their executions and witnessed their deaths. She also counsels families of murder victims and is a member of Amnesty International and the U.S. National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Prejean has lived and worked in Louisiana all her life, as a teacher and parish religious education director. She has been awarded numerous honorary degrees from universities from Spokane to Scotland, as well as the Champion of Liberty Award from the U.S. Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Sanctity of Life Award.

The day after her public lecture, Prejean joined in an informal public conversation on issues of diversity as they relate to human rights and the death penalty. Several of those who attended credited Prejean’s speech of the night before with turning them around on the death penalty issue. One student said, "You made me think about things from a different point of view. I don’t think I could ever go back to supporting the death penalty now."

Photo by Bob Ellis