This was written by Maggie, one of our summer interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.
I left my normal school day of sixth grade and got a call from my mom, asking me if I want to go see a play at my sister’s school but, before I answered, she warned me it is for adult audiences. I wanted to be mature, so I went to go see Dead Man Walking, a story a religious sister who becomes a spiritual director for a man on death row. I ended up meeting this sister, Helen Prejean, in which she signed my book and talked about her experiences, which lead I saw portrayed live on stage. I was so moved, confused, pained, and interested in this story that I saw it again a day later. Prejean is a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet, which was the order of this high school.
My sister bought a book called Just Mercy for her college summer reading. I was intrigued by the outward message that I picked it up to read and was encompassed by the story of Bryan Stevenson defending people on death row.
I sat in my theology class and stared at the same poster every day. This poster angered, motivated, saddened, and shocked me. “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” This provided me with the realization, belief, and reassurance of why I am against the death penalty.
Prejean shares that “the death penalty is one of the great moral issues facing our country, yet most people rarely think about it and very few of us take the time to delve deeply enough into this issue to be able to make an informed decision about it. We are all worth more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” Stevenson has written that “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” These two advocates against the death penalty share the same opinion about this unjust act.
Prejean became a sister at age 18 in 1957, and she earned a B.A. in English and education from St. Mary’s Dominican College in New Orleans, in 1962 and an M.A. in religious education from Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in 1973. After her education, she taught high school students and served as the Religious Education Director at St. Frances Cabrini Parish in New Orleans. She also became the Formation Director for her religious community.
Prejean wrote Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States and The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions.
She heads the Ministry Against the Death Penalty and has traveled to every state and many countries, including the Vatican, speaking at conferences, high schools, and everywhere in between to teach people about the realities of death row and the death peanlty. Prejean has also been a member of Amnesty International, Murder Victim Families for Reconciliation, Moratorium Campaign, and the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. She has been actively working to abolish the death penalty in all 50 states ever since she starting visiting prison inmates. She has also founded Survive, an advocacy group to help victims of families of homicide and crimes cope in her home state of Louisiana. In addition, Prejean helped make the Vatican’s decision to ban the death penalty in the Catechism possible. Lastly, she has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times. Prejean has been featured on 60 Minutes, ABC World News Tonight, BBC World Service, and NBC. Her writing pieces have been included in the Baltimore Sun, San Francisco Chronicle, St. Anthony Messenger, and St. Petersburg Times.
Specific to Dead Man Walking, in 1982, Prejean became a pen pal and spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, who was the convicted killer of two teenagers. He was sentenced to the death penalty, to die in the electric chair of Angola State Prison in Louisiana. Prior to Sonnier’s death date, Prejean became close with Sonnier, discussing his life and his fears. Additionally, she got to know the victims’ families as well as the prison employees whose job is to execute inmates. In her book, she explains that she spiritually advised Robert Willie too, who she also accompanied to the death chamber. Dead Man Walking became a major motion picture and Oscar-winning film, which starred Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen and Sean Penn as a death row inmate, in 1995. The book has also become a stage play, opera, and musical album as well as a number-one New York Times best seller and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It has also been translated in ten languages.
Prejean’s second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions (2005), highlighted more about the legal system and criminal justice system in America, where innocent people have been executed. In this, she wrote about Dobie Gillis Williams and Joseph O’Dell, who both were innocent but executed. Their cases consisted of errors from lawyers and courtroom technicalities, and evidence was never presented in full. She also wrote about the disproportionate numbers of poor Americans on death row.
In Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Stevenson, he poses the questions, does our criminal justice system lack mercy and could the U.S. legal system exact justice if it abolished capital punishment, or eliminated mandatory minimum sentencing? He shares his experiences as the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. His book became a New York Times bestseller, was named by Time Magazine as one of the 10 Best Books of Nonfiction for 2014, and was awarded many times, such as a 2015 NAACP Image Award.
Stevenson is a public-interest lawyer and a professor of law at New York University Law School since 1998. The Equal Justice Initiative is based in Alabama and has won legal challenges to eliminate unfair, excessive sentencing, exonerating many innocent prisoners on death row. It also has worked to end the abuse of the incarcerated and mentally ill and the prosecution of children as adults, such as making history through the U.S. Supreme Court holding ruling mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger as unconstitutional. Stevenson has given over 125 condemned prisoners their freedom; has been nationally recognized for his work, receiving several awards; and has argued six times before the Supreme Court. As a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government, he has also received over 30 honorary doctoral degrees from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Georgetown, Oxford, and other universities. Stevenson received the National Medal of Liberty from the American Civil Liberties Union and the ABA Medal, which is the American Bar Association’s highest honor, and was named the Public Interest Lawyer of the Year by the National Association of Public Interest Lawyers. Most recently, Stevenson was the main subject of the new HBO documentary “True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality,” which follows his creation of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. This memorial is the only one in the United States that is dedicated to victims of lynching and white supremacy. Beyond his job and writing, he has served his community by enacting anti-discrimination and anti-poverty initatives, educating people about racial segregation and slavery.
Many people have fought against the death penalty because they have personally seen the injustices involved in it. Prejean and Stevenson have been responsible for moving the dialogue forward to end this hypocrisy and hatred and are heroic in this mission to restore justice in the United States.
Prejean’s Tweets about Stevenson:
More from:
Stevenson:
- https://eji.org/bryan-stevenson
- https://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice
Prejean:
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