Sister Helen Prejean, Author of “Dead Man Walking,” to Speak at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Sister Helen Prejean, a leading advocate for the abolition of the death penalty, will deliver a lecture titled “The Death of Innocents and the Death Penalty” on Monday, September 11 at 7 p.m. in the Hogan Campus Center Ballroom at the College of the Holy Cross.  The event is free and open to the public.

Taking place on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., her talk is part of the Lectures on Ministry series, through which church leaders and ministers in a variety of ministries speak about their own vocations and the challenges they see the church needing to focus on in the 21st century.  It is presented under the auspices of the College’s Lilly Vocation Discernment Initiative.

It is a return to the Holy Cross campus for Prejean: she received an honorary doctor of laws degree from the College in 1999, several years after her award-winning book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States, was published and adapted into the film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

A member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, Prejean is also the author of a second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions.  In it, she tells the story of two men whom she accompanied to their executions. The book also examines the recent history of death penalty decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States and looks at the track record of George W. Bush as Governor of Texas.

Her activism began in New Orleans in 1981 through a correspondence she maintained with a convicted murderer, Elmo Patrick Sonnier, who was sentenced to death by electrocution. She visited Sonnier in prison and agreed to be his spiritual adviser in the months leading up to his death. The experience gave Sister Helen greater insight into the process involved in executions and she began speaking out against capital punishment. At the same time, she also founded Survive, an organization devoted to providing counselling to the families of victims of violence.

Prejean has since ministered to many other inmates on death row and witnessed several more executions. She served as National Chairperson of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty from 1993 to 1995. She bases her work at the Death Penalty Discourse Center in New Orleans.