Sister Helen Prejean learned early on that opposing the death penalty in the age of President Trump would be a different kind of challenge.
The long-time activist and author of “Dead Man Walking” has encountered hundreds of death penalty supporters over the years, including American presidents, so she was used to rhetorical attacks from those who disagreed with her.
But she wasn’t prepared for Trump, a president who not only supports the death penalty, but one who tweets about it, touts it on the campaign trail, urges judges to impose it on specific individuals and calls for executions in full-page newspaper ads.
“He doesn’t represent the law,” said Prejean, who spoke to The Enquirer while in Cincinnati to speak Saturday to the Salesian Guild, a group of Catholic communicators.
“That’s who we have as president.”
“I’m not sure he even understands how the legal system works,” she said. “He doesn’t really represent law and order. He is the epitome of disorder.”
Yet Prejean knows Trump’s “law and order” message resonated with millions of American voters during the presidential campaign and helped land him in the White House. And she knows Trump makes no apologies for his tough talk on crime and the death penalty.
Prejean said his appeal to so many Americans means death penalty opponents like her must adapt to a less friendly political landscape.
“We’re going to have to fight for it more,” Prejean said. “We’ve got to be actively engaged to stand up for what we believe.”
One of her most enduring memories of Trump before he won the election was the full-page ads he took out in New York City newspapers in 1989 after the arrest of five black and Latino youths accused of raping a white woman in Central Park.
The ad called for the return of the death penalty, because muggers and murderers “should be forced to suffer.” The youths later were exonerated, but Trump never expressed regret for the ad.
“That’s who we have as president,” Prejean said.
Whatever the challenges now, Prejean is optimistic about the future. She cites polls in recent years that show support for the death penalty eroding.
The Pew Research Center has found that after peaking at 80 percent in the mid-1990s, support for the death penalty fell to 49 percent last year, with 42 percent now saying they oppose it.
The number of death penalty convictions and executions also has declined in the past decade, driven by high-profile exonerations, botched executions and the increasing use of life without parole sentences as an alternative to death.
Even so, executions continue across the country. Ohio is scheduled on Feb. 13 to execute Raymond Tibbetts, a Cincinnati man convicted of killing his wife and landlord 20 years ago.
Prejean said her message is that all life has dignity and should be protected, from innocents and the unborn to death row inmates. It’s what her Catholic faith teaches, she said, and it’s what she’s been telling audiences around the world for years.
“Even those among us who have done a terrible crime have a dignity that must not be taken from them,” Prejean said.
She said she’s hopeful that message will be heard, even when the president so often delivers a different one.
“I really believe in the people,” she said. “I believe in their goodness.”
Source: Cincinnati News, Dan Horn, February 3, 2018
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
