Skip to main content

How Sister Helen Prejean became a leading advocate for the abolition of the death penalty

Sister Helen Prejean
Sister Helen Prejean is a leading advocate for abolition of the death penalty. She's written 2 books on the topic, and 1 of them, "Dead Man Walking," became an Oscar-winning film. She's been nominated 3 times for the Nobel Peace Prize. Her new memoir, "River of Fire," will be published by Random House, probably in January.

You grew up in Baton Rouge. What brought you to New Orleans?

I joined the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1957, so I was 18. I've been in New Orleans ever since. Part of that was going to college at St. Mary's Dominican.

Did you know much about the city when you arrived?

Oh, yes. We would come on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It was a holiday, and that's when we'd go shopping in New Orleans. It was a big deal. We would "motor" to New Orleans with mama and go to D.H. Holmes and Maison Blanche to do shopping.

In high school, we took a bus trip for Mardi Gras one year. ... The convent was kind of limited because we didn't get out much, but (we knew) the spirit of the city.

Life in the convent was sheltered, and your early years as a teacher were spent in Catholic schools. Were you familiar with the plight of the poor here?

I'm the typical kind of person who came up with privilege. My daddy was a successful lawyer in Baton Rouge. I knew there was a problem of poverty. I knew there were problems of racism, but I never attended to them much. They didn't seem to touch me much because I didn't know any real people. But when I moved into St. Thomas (housing project in New Orleans) and worked at a place called Hope House and I lived among the people, African-American people became my teachers.

Part of what privilege did in my life was it separated me from the suffering. I'd never encountered people where the police were beating them up, where they would be arrested and sit in jail for 3 years because they didn't have money for bond. I had no idea that all this was going on simply because of race. But it impassioned me because for the 1st time, I saw the suffering. I sat with people at Charity Hospital with a sick child until, finally, at 2 in the morning, some tired intern took on the job. I said, "There is something wrong. This is the United States."

That must have been a harsh awakening.

The harsh reality is that it was always going on, but I awakened to it and I knew I had to do something. It was at St. Thomas, working there at Hope House, that one day coming down St. Andrew Street, somebody from the Louisiana Coalition on Jails and Prisons said to me, "Hey, Sister Helen, do you want to be a pen pal to somebody on death row?"

I never dreamed this person was going to be executed. It was 1982, and we hadn't had an execution in Louisiana for over 20 years. There had been an unofficial moratorium. I wasn't even aware that in 1976, the Supreme Court put the death penalty back, and here it's the early '80s, so I write him. His name is Patrick Sonnier, and 2 years later, I am with him when he is electrocuted by the state of Louisiana.

It set me on fire. I came out and I realized people were going to read the account (of the execution) and say, "He did a terrible crime. He killed two teenage kids, and he paid with his life. Justice was done." But I got close to the process, and this is the story in "Dead Man Walking." That's the story, when (actor/director) Tim Robbins read it, he realized we had a way here, the journey of 1 person, descending into the depths (to make a film about the death penalty). He loved to say, "and the nun was in over her head." And I was because I didn't know anything about law and what it meant to have a good attorney. ... People could just be railroaded on through.

How many people on death row have you served as spiritual adviser?

I've accompanied 6 people to execution, and I'm with my 7th man now. His name is Manuel Ortiz, and he's innocent. Of the 7, 3 have been innocent. The 2nd book I wrote is called the "Death of Innocents" and I tell about the story of Dobie Gillis Williams, an African-American man with the IQ of 65 executed by the state. He couldn't get the legal help he needed in time, and he was killed. You talk about lighting the fire of your passion - it's to witness an innocent person executed. You can't be neutral anymore.

Look at the way the death penalty has been applied. Most of the executions, like 70 %, have happened in former slave states. Louisiana has the harshest incarceration rate in the U.S.; the U.S. has has harshest rate, especially of people of color, in the world; and Louisiana is at the top of that. And it came out of the legacy of slavery.

You've written books, conferred with popes and been nominated for the Nobel Prize. What do you consider to be your biggest accomplishment?

The privilege of being with human beings when it counted most. When nobody believed in their dignity and (the state) was killing them. And I got to be with them. That's it. That's the heart of it.

How has the city influenced your work?

I love the city. There's a warmth and goodness in New Orleans people. Not just New Orleans but Louisiana. It really is a life state; we love life. Music and food and our stories. We have humor. .. Music is healing and life-giving. The spirit of the people is strong. I wouldn't want to live anyplace else.

Source: The Advocate, Karen Taylor Gist, April 26, 2018


⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.


Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!



"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Popular posts from this blog

Biden Commuted Their Death Sentences. Now What?

As three men challenge their commutations, others brace for imminent prison transfers and the finality of a life sentence with no chance of release. In the days after President Joe Biden commuted his death sentence, 40-year-old Rejon Taylor felt like he’d been reborn. After facing execution for virtually his entire adult life for a crime he committed at 18, he was fueled by a new sense of purpose. He was “a man on a mission,” he told me in an email on Christmas Day. “I will not squander this opportunity of mercy, of life.”

Saudi Arabia executes Somali national, Saudi citizen

Mogadishu (HOL) — Saudi authorities executed a Somali national convicted of drug smuggling and a Saudi citizen found guilty of murder, the Ministry of Interior announced on Sunday. The Somali national, identified as Mohamed Nur Hussein Ja'al, was arrested for attempting to smuggle hashish into Saudi Arabia. A specialized court found him guilty and sentenced him to death under tazir punishment, a discretionary ruling in Islamic law for severe crimes. After an appeal, the Supreme Court upheld the sentence, and a royal decree authorized the execution, which was carried out on Sunday in Najran, southern Saudi Arabia.

Alabama executes Demetrius Frazier

Alabama puts man to death in the nation's fourth execution using nitrogen gas ATMORE, Ala. — A man convicted of murdering a woman after breaking into her apartment as she slept was put to death Thursday evening in Alabama in the nation's fourth execution using nitrogen gas. Demetrius Frazier, 52, was pronounced dead at 6:36 p.m. at a south Alabama prison for his murder conviction in the 1991 rape and killing of Pauline Brown, 41. It was the first execution in Alabama this year and the third in the U.S. in 2025, following a lethal injection Wednesday in Texas and another last Friday in South Carolina.

Todd Willingham: Ex-wife says convicted killer confessed

The former wife of a man whose 2004 execution in Texas has become a source of controversy has said he admitted setting the fire that killed their three daughters during a final prison meeting just weeks before he was put to death, according to a Texas newspaper. Stacy Kuykendall, the ex-wife of Cameron Todd Willingham, said in a statement to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram published Sunday that Willingham told her he was upset by threats to divorce him after the new year. The fire that killed the couple's three girls was Dec. 23, 1991. Her last threat to divorce him, she said in a statement, occurred the night before the fire. "He said if I didn't have my girls I couldn't leave him and that I could never have Amber or the twins with anyone else but him," according to the statement from Kuykendall to the newspaper. Willingham went to his death proclaiming his innocence. And over the years, she has offered differing accounts. A Tribune investigation in 2004 showed the...

South Carolina executes Marion Bowman Jr.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina put a third inmate to death in four months Friday as it goes through a backlog of prisoners who exhausted their appeals while the state couldn’t find lethal injection drugs. Marion Bowman Jr. was executed at 6:27 p.m. Bowman, 44, was convicted of murder in the shooting death of a friend whose burned body was found in the trunk of a car. Bowman maintained his innocence since his arrest and started his final statement with “I did not kill Kandee Martin.”

‘Here we are again’: Death row Canadian waits as Montana looks at resuming executions

The fate of a Canadian who has been on death row in Montana for the past 42 years has been thrown into more uncertainty as state legislators try again to remove obstacles to resuming executions.  Ronald Smith, 67, is originally from Red Deer, Alta., and has been on death row since 1983, a year after he and another man, high on LSD and alcohol, shot and killed two young Indigenous cousins near East Glacier, Mont.  Time moves slowly at Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Mont. where Smith has been described as a model prisoner for four decades. But almost like clockwork every two years, another attempt to allow the state to resume executions begins in the Montana legislature.

Texas executes Steven Nelson

A man has been executed by lethal injection in the US state of Texas for the 2011 murder of a pastor that he insisted he did not commit. Steven Nelson, 37, spent more than a dozen years on death row for the murder of Clint Dobson, 28, during a robbery of the NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington, near Dallas. Judy Elliott, the church secretary, was also badly beaten during the robbery but survived.

Singapore | Pannir set to be executed on Feb 20

His former lawyer, M Ravi, says the only recourse now is for the Malaysian government to file an urgent application to the International Court of Justice challenging the execution. PETALING JAYA: Pannir Selvam Pranthaman, the 38-year-old Malaysian convicted of drug trafficking in Singapore, will be executed on Thursday (Feb 20), according to his former lawyer, M Ravi. In a Facebook post today, Ravi said Pannir’s sister told him that she had received a letter from the prison today confirming his execution in four days. Ravi claimed that during his time representing Pannir in 2020, Singapore’s prison authorities improperly forwarded confidential information on 13 inmates to the Singapore Attorney-General’s Chambers.

U.S. | AG Bondi orders federal inmate transferred for execution

President Donald Trump's newly installed attorney general, Pam Bondi, has ordered the transfer of a federal inmate to Oklahoma so he can be executed, following through on Trump's sweeping executive order to more actively support the death penalty. Bondi this week directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer inmate George John Hanson, 60, so that he can be executed for his role in the kidnapping and killing of a 77-year-old woman in Tulsa in 1999.

Singapore Court Of Appeal Grants Stay Of Execution To Pannir Selvam

SINGAPORE, Feb 19 (Bernama) -- Singapore Court of Appeal on Wednesday has granted Malaysian death row inmate Pannir Selvam Pranthaman a stay of execution just hours before he was scheduled to be executed on Thursday (Feb 20). Judge of the Appellate Division Woo Bih Li, in his judgment, said the stay was granted pending the determination of Pannir Selvam’s Post-Appeal Applications in Capital Cases (PACC) application.