Prejean: Death penalty opposes human dignity
By KATE STEER
Associate News Editor
A standing room only crowd gathered in 101 Debartolo Wednesday to experience the dynamic speaking abilities and powerful message of Sister Helen Prejean.
Prejean, who authored the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Dead Man Walking, spoke about her experience with the death penalty and death row and offered ways to work to make change in this realm. The death penalty, Prejean said, is a highly volatile issue; it often becomes an issue of justice for the victims' families opposing human dignity and rights.
"What are we going to do with the outrage we feel?" she asked of the response to heinous crimes, though she does not point to the death penalty as the answer.
Prejean, a native of Louisiana, is a self-described "Southern storyteller" who began counseling death row inmates in her home state in 1981. Out of this experience came the story Dead Man Walking that was published in 1993. It was subsequently made into a movie, which Prejean calls a "miracle film" for bringing the subject to the American public.
"The film exists because Susan Sarandon is the midwife of Dead Man Walking," Prejean said. Sarandon read the book and pursued its production as a movie with the help of director Tim Robbins. Prejean praised the pair for their work for human rights.
"If Tim Robbins is going to direct it, Susan Sarandon is going to have the leading role, and Sean Penn came on board to play the death row inmate, I thought all the Hollywood studios would go for it," Prejean said. After facing many rejections, the story was picked up by Polygram Films International.
Prejean's support for the project was bolstered by her trust in Sarandon and Robbins and her hope that the film would bring the issue to the American consciousness.
"What the film Dead Man Walking did was to reach out to the American people and give them a way to begin reflecting on the death penalty," she said. This achievement has also brought Prejean's work into the public eye, giving her the opportunity to travel internationally to speak on the subject. Her ultimate goal is to turn the tables politically, she said, and abolish the death penalty.
"On the one hand we hear about innocent people being killed in wanton evil acts where their lives are just cut short, and we feel outraged — it's part of moral sensitivity to feel outraged," she said. "But on the other hand, we have the polls that show that public support for the death penalty is plummeting."
Prejean pointed to the unreliability of the system that hands down the death penalty, stating that currently 87 innocent people have come off of death row since its reinstatement in 1976.
Following the removal of Anthony Porter from death row in Illinois, Gov. George Ryan, who supports the death penalty, imposed a moratorium while the system that has sentenced numerous innocent people to die is investigated.
While 5 states have followed suit and formed initiatives to call for moratoriums, there are other states in which the death penalty is deeply ingrained in the culture.
"We have legitimized vengeance as a part of our culture," she said. "I didn't know I was going to get involved with the death penalty, or walking with people to the electric chair, or with the victims' families, or with the guards who are part of the execution squads," said Prejean of her involvement. "I got involved by getting involved with poor people."
Ultimately, her introduction to the death penalty was incidental; she was approached by a member of the Prison Coalition to become a pen pal with a death row inmate. Through this project she came to know inmate Patrick Sonnier, whom she eventually went to visit.
"Prisons are such places of abandonment," she said. Sonnier's mother visited once but was unable to return because of the trauma it caused.
"He was alone and sentenced to die," said Prejean. "I couldn't believe how human his face was."
Prejean continued to visit and became Sonnier's spiritual advisor, and would accompany him literally to his death.
After accompanying 5 people to their executions, and carrying with her their faces and the faces of victims' families, Prejean became deeply involved in working to reform the system that imposes such a punishment. Those who participate in her side of the issue refer to the death penalty as torture, which Amnesty International has defined as "an extreme mental or physical assault on someone rendered helpless." Prejean does not say that all victims' families support the death penalty.
"There can be people in this white-hot fire of loss who choose forgiveness," she said.
The father of one of Sonnier's victims spoke to Prejean about his decision to forgive as one inspired by the healing power of God. He used Scripture to realize that Sonnier's crimes did not make him less human.
"Jesus was not just about being kind to people," said Prejean. "Jesus inaugurated a new kind of community — look at who he hanged out with: all the people that society rejected, today's HIV positive, convicted criminals, gay and lesbian."
This forgiveness is something that Prejean points as crucial to social and political change regarding the death penalty. She believes prison reform is essential as well.
"Over 10 years, state legislatures have been tightening up sentencing for people who are charged with first-degree murder, which is the only crime punishable by death," she said. Prejean said that this is a step toward eliminating superfluous use of the death penalty. Its ineffectiveness is evidenced by the fact that only five percent of those eligible for the death penalty receive it as a sentence, and that of those, a large number end up being released.
In a dialogue with Pope John Paul, Prejean was able to clarify the Church's official stance on the issue, which has recently changed from support of the death penalty to strictly pro-life.
"Modern societies have a way to incapacitate people without imitating their violence," she said.
Prejean was invited to speak by Call to Action Michiana, and was sponsored by many local groups including Amnesty International.
All News Stories for Thursday, March 30, 2000
