2018 Speaker

Sister Helen Prejean is known around the world for her tireless work against the death penalty. She has been instrumental in sparking national dialogue on capital punishment and in shaping the Catholic Church’s newly vigorous opposition to all executions.
 
In 1982, Sister Helen started corresponding with Patrick Sonnier, sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison for the murder of two teenagers. Sonnier asked her to become his spiritual advisor and she accepted.
 

Photo credit: Scott Langley

In 1984, Elmo Patrick Sonnier was put to death in the electric chair. Sister Helen was there to witness his execution. In the following months, she became spiritual advisor to another death row inmate, Robert Lee Willie, who soon met the same fate as Sonnier. After witnessing this second execution, Sister Helen realized that this lethal act, performed at midnight, would remain hidden unless she spoke up about it. She came together with others to hold execution vigils and to march to draw attention to the issue. She founded a support group for victims’ family members, called Survive. And she sat down and wrote a book, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.
 
Dead Man Walking ignited a national debate on capital punishment and it inspired an Academy Award winning movie, a play and an opera.
 
A quarter of a century later and with capital punishment still practiced in 31 states, Sister Helen divides her time between campaigning against the death penalty, counseling individual death row prisoners, and working with murder victims’ family members. She has accompanied four more men to their deaths and is currently spiritual advisor to two men, both of whom she believes to be innocent: Manuel Ortiz on death row at Angola, and Richard Glossip on Oklahoma’s death row.
 
Sister Helen has recently finished writing her third book, River of Fire, a ‘prequel’ to Dead Man Walking.

Her second book, The Death of Innocents, shows how disastrously wrong this flawed, very human system is by taking us close to the stories of two men she accompanied to their deaths, Dobie Gillis Williams and Joseph O’Dell.

Dead Man Walking and The Death of Innocents will be available for purchase on Tuesday, October 2nd. Sister Helen will sign books following the dinner. Please bring cash or check made out to Ministry Against the Death Penalty or MADP.