December 4, 1998

There is no moral or legal justification for the death penalty in the United States, according to a woman who has worked extensively with death row inmates. Sister Helen Prejean, C.S.J., shared stories as well as surprising facts and figures about the U.S. criminal justice system, provoking a variety of emotions from a packed room at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (AAPL) in New Orleans last month.

Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun, is the author of Dead Man Walking, a 1993 book about her experiences as spiritual counselor to inmates on death row in Louisiana. Fifteen years ago a worker in the Prison Coalition asked her to write to a death row inmate, and she did so. Prejean developed a friendship with the prisoner and soon became his spiritual advisor. Later she worked with other death row inmates and became an advocate against the death penalty.

A movie version of Dead Man Walking, which portrayed a death row inmate who was a composite of several men Prejean had worked with, was released in 1996. Susan Sarandon won an Academy Award for best actress in her role as Sister Helen.

Script writer/actor/director Tim Robbins and Prejean believed that the film could start a reflective process in the American public about the death penalty, said Prejean. That is indeed what has happened, she said. The San Francisco Opera is now working on an opera of Dead Man Walking, and Robbins is working on a theater version.

"That's exciting because it's not just Broadway-it's making its way into the little theaters, the universities, all over the country," Prejean said. "The more we have reflection and people are brought into different experiences, the quicker we will move to the day in this county when we will in fact abolish the death penalty."

Prejean spoke of experiences with death row inmates she has worked with. "I don't set an agenda," she said. "They know I'm their friend. They know I care about them, and that I treat them with respect and dignity."

The environment of death row and the death room is reminiscent of a hospital, said Prejean. Floors are polished, clean sheets hang over the edge of the gurney. Alcohol is used to disinfect the prisoner's arm before the needle for lethal injection is inserted. Ironically, there is a sense of civility and a protocol to follow. "But all this is toward killing a person," said Prejean.

She recounted the story of an inmate who won a stay of execution as he awaited his final meal. Though the stay was good news, she said, the mental and emotional toll of awaiting death and wondering about stays profoundly affected the man.

"You've got to have outrage over the death to seek anything as expensive, costly, and time consuming as the death penalty," noted Prejean.

One of the reasons that human rights workers are testifying before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on the death penalty, she said, is that the mental torture can not be eliminated from the death penalty experience.

Another problem with the death penalty is that it is applied selectively, said Prejean. If victims are poor or a member of a minority group, their murderers are unlikely to get the death penalty. Of 3,400 people currently on death row, she said, 85 percent killed white people, yet 50 percent of all murder victims are people of color.

Prejean went on to discuss that one of the justifications for the death penalty is that it is for the sake of the victim's family. Though some victims' families want revenge and support the death penalty, she said, they may never get beyond that idea of retribution. In contrast, other families of victims do not support the death penalty. One father said to Prejean that there was tremendous pressure on him and his wife to support the death penalty for his child's murderer and that he felt alone in his resistance.

"These families are vulnerable. They are in a state of rage and grief. Here's our societal formula: You had an ultimate loss; we offer an ultimate penalty. If you don't kill [the murderer], didn't you love?"

Bud Welch, father of a young woman killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, stood in front of the whole country on CNN and said he didn't want to see the death penalty imposed on Timothy McVeigh. He told Prejean that more and more families are saying to him, "We didn't have the courage to stand up to them [those in the community clamoring for the death penalty], but thank you. You stood up for me when I couldn't voice it."

People like Welch chose the path of forgiveness and reconciliation, knowing that bitterness and hate could destroy them, said Prejean.

Prejean said that other countries are moving away from the death penalty. For the last two years the U.N Commission on Human Rights has put a moratorium on the death penalty, and while the moratorium is supported by most countries, including those of the former Soviet Union, that want to belong to the European Union, the U.S. has voted with China, Iran, and Iraq to uphold the death penalty.

U.S. representatives to the commission are uncomfortable, she said. "Well, we know that being uncomfortable is the first step toward change," she noted. "Ghandi said that oppressors stop oppressing usually not for high lofty moral reasons, but because it gets too costly to keep oppressing. And part of costliness is in all these international circles where the U.S. holds itself up as the flagship of democracy and democratic values in the world when we've got a very vulnerable flank."