For 2 1/2 years, Sister Helen Prejean visited Pat Sonnier, sometimes three or four times a week. They spoke of God and the Bible, of how people will be judged in the afterlife. She visited his home, met his mother, spent hours talking with his younger brother. The two developed a close bond, one of the closest he had ever known.
Their time together ended, as she always feared it might, when Louisiana state prison officials strapped Sonnier into a chair and pumped 19,000 volts of electricity through the convicted killer as she watched.
"Dead Man Walking," Sister Helen's extraordinary first book, tells the story of her time with Sonnier, convicted with his brother of stabbing to death two teen-agers, as well as with a second convict who also was electrocuted. In all, she has counseled five men on Death Row, three of whom she has watched die.
More than just a story, the book is a scathing -- though remarkably evenhanded -- indictment of a judicial system that allows a government to kill men in the name of justice. Her attack on the death penalty comes at a time when public fear about crime is at an all-time high and support for capital punishment is widespread.
But "Dead Man Walking" not only has received critical acclaim -- it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize -- it's also helping to spread her belief that no matter now heinous the crime, no matter how certain the guilt, the state should not be in the business of killing people.
"I just completely underestimated the power that the book would have," says Sister Helen, who spoke with students this week at Notre Dame Preparatory School and Mount St. Joseph High School. "It used to be before the book, if you said you were going to have a speaker on the death penalty, you got four people there. But the book . . . It draws people out.
And once they're drawn out, once Sister Helen can talk to them, she's sure they will listen. And understand. And turn away from a punishment she is convinced leaves behind only victims, including the people forced to carry out the sentence. No one, she believes, benefits from the death penalty, citing studies that show it is not effective in deterring crime.
"Once people get below that first level of response, 'Yeah, people who do such terrible crimes deserve to die,' there are decent, feeling people who really don't want to have to kill people. And you have to get in touch with that part too."
Sister Helen, 55, is a small woman, with black, gray-streaked hair, brown eyes and an unceasingly gracious manner. Her voice, accented in tones that betray her southern Louisiana upbringing, is strong. Her speech is peppered with colorful colloquialisms that both humanize the speaker and emphasize themessage.
And her message is simple: The death penalty is wrong.
For 50 minutes yesterday, she told the junior class at St. Joe what it's like to watch a man be put to death. She spoke with unrelenting passion about the inequities in the criminal justice system that put the poor on Death Row -- especially the black poor -- in far greater numbers than the white or the rich. She admitted without hesitation that these men have committed atrocities and deserve punishment, and spoke movingly of the pain suffered by victims' families.
Maybe these men belong in jail for the rest of their lives, she said, but they do not deserve to be killed.
Sister Helen, a Roman Catholic nun of the order of St. Joseph of Medaille, says she never thought much about the death penalty before a friend suggested she write to Pat Sonnier. A lifelong Louisianan (she still lives in New Orleans), she had worked with the poor, even lived for a while in one of New Orleans' most crime-infested housing projects.
She began corresponding with Sonnier in 1982. After a few weeks, she arranged a meeting. And over the next 2 1/2 years, she would come to know him as a human being who had made a mistake but who she believed didn't deserve to pay for it with his life.
Sister Helen spent long hours on Death Row, working tirelessly on Sonnier's behalf. She found lawyers to argue his case on appeal and met with the governor and parole board trying to find someone willing to spare his life.
And she was there when an executioner, who was paid $400, threw the switch that ended Pat Sonnier's life.
But her opposition to capital punishment is more than a matter of basic morals, she writes in "Dead Man Walking" (the book's name refers to what guards at San Quentin call out as they escort prisoners to Death Row). Death sentences are meted out in ways that are anything but fair, she contends: 70 percent of all executions are carried out in five Southern states, while 80 percent are for killing white people.
Executions, she argues, are more like perverse lotteries than just punishments. Those who die are those unlucky enough to kill someone in a state that allows the death penalty, in a county where prosecutors believe in seeking it, with lawyers not smart enough to wrangle a plea bargains that will keep their clients alive.
During her talk at Mount St. Joe yesterday, Sr. Helen seemed to have won everyone over.
But just as the class was about to be dismissed, a young man from the fourth row walked to the microphone to challenge her. He voiced what has become a familiar rejoinder to Sister Helen during her 12 years of almost constant advocacy.
"Nobody ever said life was fair," said Patrick McGonigal, a junior from Columbia, taking pains not to show any disrespect to Sister Helen. "Some famous scientist once said, 'For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.' If you kill somebody, I believe, rightfully . . . that you should be killed also."
Sister Helen never raised her voice. She'd heard it all before and takes pains to ensure everyone's viewpoint is heard. "Dead Man Walking" includes details of the close bonds she has developed with even some of her harshest critics -- the families of the murder victims.
"Maybe life isn't fair," she told Patrick, "but when it comes to deciding whether someone's going to live or die, we'd better be daggone sure it's as fair as it can be."