Dead Man Walking

Author: Helen Prejean

Helen Prejean is a writer, lecturer and community organiser who was born in Baton Rouge and has lived and worked in Louisiana all her life. She has campaigned extensively on the subject of capital punishment and has featured on "ABC Prime Time", "Oprah", "The Today Show", "60 Minutes", "the BBC's Everyman programme" and an NBC special series on the death penalty. Her articles have appeared in sources of publications in the US and Europe. A member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, she is currently writing a book about women and equality in the Catholic Church.

Introduction:

Helen Prejean wrote the book "Dead man walking" in 1993. The book was that successful that it was made into a film in 1995. Susan Sarandon played the part of Sister Helen Prejean and got an Oscar for the best actress. The film as well as the book excellently shows the life of someone who was sentenced to death being accompanied by a nun.

Since the first publication of this book in 1993 the states of Kansas (1994) and New York (1995) have reinstated the death penalty and Congress has enacted the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1994), which expands federal crimes punishable by death to about 60 offences.

Impact:

Helen Prejean, a nun, volunteers to write a letter to a prisoner on Death Row. After some time Helen gets a letter from a young man, called Pat Sonnier. He tells her about his life in prison and about his family. At the moment he is living in a small prison cell where he is spending about 23 hours a day. Nevertheless the imprisons on Death Row are much better treated than an ordinary criminal: The meals are much better and they don't have to work. Pat already has a daughter who is 11 years old. Helen finds him rather nice and wants to visit him.

Before she can firstly see Patrick she has a conversation with the priest who isn't very happy with her idea of visiting Pat. He is afraid that Helen's contact to the criminal could become too close. When Helen later sits in front of Pat she firstly feels nothing. Both talk about their families, about Prejean's will to become a nun and finally about the crime he has committed:

One day he and his brother went into the woods and saw a couple in his car. They forced them to leave the car, abused the girl sexually and killed them with a rifle. Although he has always claimed that he just observed his brother killing the couple court didn't believe Pat. Pat was sentenced to death by a lethal injection and his brother Eddie just had to go to prison.

In some way Helen believes Patrick and proposes to get him an attorney to object to the sentence. Meanwhile she visits Pat's mother who tells her that she and her family suffer a lot from journalists and people who threat them because of their relation to a murderer.

In a break of the court procedure Helen Prejean firstly meets the relatives of Pat's victims, who find it scandalous that a nun supports a murderer. The procedure is not successful. Feeling guilty in the conversation with the two dead teenager's parents, she visits both couples. Mr. Delacroy, the girl's father, understands her situation and tells Helen that his wife just left him. Mr. And Mrs. Poncy don't believe Helen that she wants to support both parts.

Eventually Pat himself bans his last chance to survive. In an interview on TV Pat admits having prejudice against Blacks and regarding Hitler as a kind of role model. Although Pat lost the process, he wants Helen to provide him emotional support until he dies.

From that moment Helen nearly spends the whole day with Pat and becomes more and more involved into this case. She has nightmares and desperately wants to help Patrick although it's too late anyway and she doesn't really like him. Her main job is it to make him admit what he actually did.

Only a few hours before he gets the lethal injection Patrick admits that he has raped the girl but that his brother killed the couple.

Characteristics:

Pat Sonnier:

He always claims to be a strong man. He isn't afraid of anything and even death penalty won't harm him. Only in the end of the book Pat is really friendly to Helen. Especially at the beginning he regards her as a weak and inexperienced woman, who will soon stop helping him. He has huge prejudice against Blacks and other minorities. He is of the opinion that these people are dirty and violent. Especially in his childhood he mostly experienced that.

When he hears about the little chance to save his life he wants Helen to help him and says that actually he doesn't care whether he dies or not. But that's not right. He is terribly disappointed after he hears the judge and he firstly admits being afraid of death. In her time as an emotional supporter Helen has to talk a lot about death with him to calm him down. In the end of the book he seems to regret what he has done.

Helen Prejean:

She is an ordinary nun normally caring for children. She has never been involved in such a case and originally just wants to write a letter to Patrick. One of the key-sentences in this book is "Helen, will you come back", after Helen has visited Pat for the first time. She actually didn't want to come back because she hated the ambience in the prison but she didn't want to disappoint him. But soon she gets into conflict with her mind: On the one hand she can understand the parents of the killed teenagers, who want to see the murderer dead. But on the other hand Patrick always mentions his possible innocence and she doesn't accept death-penalty as a punishment. So, should she support a criminal who has killed 2 young people or should she leave him alone? She obviously decides to support the criminal. Although many people condemn her behaviour and although she gets nightmares she wants to fulfil her task to accompany Pat his last days of being alive. Helen Prejean is a woman with a big personality and only a very small percentage of all people would have been able to stand such a situation.

Death penalty - is it the right way of punishing?

Obviously it's hard to answer this question because so far there was no-one who returned from "heaven" and told us about death. We don't know, what would be the worse penalty? Death penalty should be the hardest penalty that a human-being can get. But maybe a fast death is more comfortable than staying in prison for a lifetime. Having to do dirty, senseless work for only a little money, having to stay in a small cell until death - a monotonous nine-to-five-lifestyle.

People who support death penalty claim that not death is the thing that should be punishing for the criminal. It's the long time to wait for your end. For example Carla Faye Tucker, a woman who killed two men with a pickaxe, was on Death-Row for 15 years until she was executed by a lethal injection a year ago. In "Dead man walking" the rather serious and cool behaving Pat is very depressed and actually only cries in his last week of life. Most people are deterred by death penalty. Nevertheless in the USA, where death penalty exists, the murder rate is higher than in other countries. Maybe criminals, who really want to kill someone, either don't want to live anymore, or don't think about death penalty. Besides death penalty has the positive effect that the world gets rid of a criminal.

On the other hand death penalty has many disadvantages: The high costs for the convicts are just a small part of them. Is it right to kill someone because he killed someone? Then we are also criminals. And death penalty is not only a punishment for the convict. It's also a punishment for his family. Mothers have to clarify to their children that their dad will never come home again and women often don't have anything to continue life.

Another terrible aspect of death penalty is, that many people, often relatives of people on Death Row start feeling aggressions against law and the government. They know that the convict doesn't have to die. He is healthy and could probably continue life for another 60 years, but just because of a crime he has to die.