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Author: Death of Innocents, An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions and Dead Men Walking
The Karen Faith Witt and A.H. Weinstein Memorial Forum, The Battisti Memorial Lecture in partnership with Case Western Reserve University Law School
Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ (b. April 21, 1939, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana) is a vowed Roman Catholic religious sister, one of the Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille, who has become a leading American advocate for the abolition of the death penalty .
Her efforts began in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1981, through a correspondence she maintained with a convicted murderer, Elmo Patrick Sonnier, who was sentenced to death by electocution. She visited Sonnier in prison and agreed to be his spiritual adviser in the months leading up to his death. The experience gave Prejean greater insight into the process involved in executions and she began speaking out against capital punishment. At the same time, she also founded Survive, an organization devoted to providing counseling to the families of victims of violence.
Prejean has since ministered to many other inmates on death row and witnessed several more executions. She served as National Chairperson of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty from 1993 to 1995.
An autobiographical account of her relationship with Sonnier and other inmates on death row served as the basis for the feature film and opera Dead Man Walking. Prejean's second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions was published in December, 2004. In it, she tells the story of two men, Dobie Gillis Williams and Joseph O'Dell, whom she accompanied to their executions. She believes that both of these men were innocent.
In 1998 Prejean was awarded the Pacem in Terris Award . It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations. Pacem in Terris is Latin for "Peace on Earth."
Prejean now bases her work at the Death Penalty Discourse Network in New Orleans and spends her time giving talks across the United States and around the world. She is pro-life: "The pope says we should be unconditionally pro-life; against abortion, against euthanasia, against suicide and (that means also) against the death penalty." This view is commonly called the Consistent Life Ethic.
September 18, 2009