Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States
Helen Prejean

bn.com Price: $10.40 Retail Price: $13.00 You Save: $2.60 (20%)   In-Stock: Ships within 24 hours  Format: Paperback, 1st ed., 276pp. ISBN: 0679751319 Publisher: Random House, Incorporated Pub. Date: May  1994 A Reader's Catalog Selection The 40,000+ best books in print

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Synopsis
The author is a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, a Catholic religious order. "Until 1980 she led a comparatively sheltered existence as a teacher and novice counselor. {The book} is an account of her subsequent journey from working with residents of New Orleans housing projects to advising inmates on Louisiana's death row. . . . {Prejean has} organized efforts to educate the public about the realities of the death penalty in the United States and to obtain legal assistance for indigent prisoners under sentence of death. . . . {She has also met} with the families of homicide victims, eventually forming a counseling group for them." (Commonweal) Index.

Annotation
In 1982, a Roman Catholic nun became the spiritual advisor to a condemned murderer who was soon executed. Powerfully and persuasively, with a compassion that embraces not only the terrified killer but the families of his victims and the men who executed him, Prejean narrates Patrick Sonnier's walk to the electric chair.

Description from The Reader's Catalog
A unique perspective on one of the greatest moral dilemmas in America, from a nun who works closely with both death-row inmates and the families of victims. Without denying the inmates' brutality, she nonetheless comes down squarely against institutionalized killing of criminals. "Sister Prejean...is an excellent writer, direct and honest and unsentimental; her accounts of crime and punishment are gripping, and her argument is persuasive"--NY Times Book Review

From The Publisher
When Chava Colon from the Prison Coalition asks me one January day in 1982 to become a pen pal to a death-row inmate, I say, Sure. The invitation seems to fit with my work in St. Thomas, a New Orleans housing project of poor black residents. Not death row exactly, but close. Thus begins Sister Helen Prejean's story of her encounter with the death penalty in America. When she first writes to Patrick Sonnier, the condemned killer of two teenagers, this unassuming Roman Catholic nun from a middle class Louisiana family is wholly unprepared for what will follow. As she grows to know Sonnier, she sees the terrified human being beneath the surface of the repentant killer and becomes increasingly disturbed not only by the inhumane conditions of his confinement but also by the terrible anguish he suffers during the long countdown toward execution. She also sees the moral struggles of the public officials - the governor, the head of the Department of Corrections, wardens, guards - who have to carry out killings that the law demands but that they do not personally believe in. And she comes to know the dismaying truth about the death penalty's disproportionate cost in money and resources, and how fragile and sometimes chaotic the justice system can be. Her experience soon leads her to ask: How can society benefit from replicating the violence it condemns? In formulating her answer, however, Helen Prejean also confronts the counterbalancing factors. Chief among them is the devastating rage and grief of the victims' families, whom she comes to know and befriend and whose need for retribution she understands. Prejean's indictment of capital punishment sensitively navigates the complex personal, ethical, and legal issues involved, balancing compassion for both the criminals and the people whose lives they destroy. By turns reflective and deeply personal, spiritual and candidly human, this engrossing and deeply moving meditation on one of the most painfully controversial issue

Reviews
From Library Journal  
Prejean, a Catholic nun, has written a moral indictment of capital punishment. This book is the result of her visits to two death-row inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary where she serves as a spiritual advisor. Although she documents the inequalities of the judicial system that has condemned these men, her main point is that if society is to inflict this extreme punishment, it should, itself, be perfect. Needless to say, it is not. Opponents of the death penalty will find reinforcement for their cause here. The general reader, however, will probably find the book too narrow in focus, too self-righteous. Prejean writes well, but her material will not attract the wide audience she wants. An optional purchase.-- Frances Sandiford, Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, N.Y.
 
From Garry Wills - The New York Review of Books  
Sister Helen's book mentions along the way all the arguments against the death penalty--that it does not deter; that it is inflicted unequally on the poor, on southerners, on blacks; that it is expensive; . . . that it does not statistically reduce crime; that revenge is an evanescent and spiritually imprisoning satisfaction. The arguments are familiar, though they take on new force in the situations in which she raises them. But it is her experience that is important in the book--the need to serve life in a context of death. She tells her story with a quiet eloquence, not indulging in diatribe or personal attack. Yet we learn, by the narrative's cumulative force, how the killing process hardens, coarsens, corrupts, or deadens those who serve it. . . . Here is one voice for life. We should really need no other.
 
From Raymond A. Schroth - America  
Rich in detailed observations and enlivened with reconstructed dialogues,Dead Man Walking is several books at once: the spiritual journey of a Southern woman who came late to the realization that the politically 'neutral' nun was actually 'on the side of the oppressor'; a portrait gallery of inmates, their victims and the Louisiana politicians who profit from the sufferings of both; a well-documented theological and sociological case that . . . 'It makes no difference whether it's citizens, countries, or governments. Killing is wrong.' . . . I think there's a chance Dead Man Walking may become another Silent Spring {by R. Carson, BRD 1962, 1963}--that its message may even reach the U.S.Supreme Court; and within our lifetimes we may look back on the years when wesent all those young men and women to the gallows, electric chairs, gas chambers and injection tables with the same shame we now feel over slavery and shoving blacks to the back of the bus.
 
From Hilary Hochman - Commonweal  
Most death row inmates are compelling and vivid characters; Prejean worksnot only with these men but with many of the more colorful figures in Louisiana politics, death penalty litigation, and the Catholic church. Yet they are all only shadows on the page, figures to whom Prejean reacts. Prejean is virtually the only person portrayed with any real depth or complexity. To be sure, the sometimes narrow perspective of {the book} has its advantages. Prejean is not preaching only to the converted. . . . {Her} naivete and occasional self-absorption are, after all, what almost everyone brings to any unfamiliar ethical problem; while they detract from her book, they may help to make her evolving beliefs about the death penalty more convincing. . . . It is her experiences with the men on death row and the victims' families that convince both herand the reader that capital punishment serves no legitimate end, and it is here that being drawn so completely into her perspective . . . is sometimes effective.
 
From Victoria A. Rebeck - The Christian Century  
Prejean's account, though peppered with theological arguments against capital punishment, is evenhanded in reporting the perspectives of inmates, victims' families and prison employees. As someone who, without a predetermined agenda, saw from up close how the punishment system operates, Prejean is well qualified to inform Christian thinking on grace, guilt and punishment. Skillfully weaving reflections and an absorbing narrative, she asserts unabashedly herbelief that capital punishment is immoral, while not attempting to explain away the arguments and feelings that support the opposite conclusion.
 
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