A worldwide debate came to campus last night as an internationally known activist spoke against capital punishment while mothers of local serial killer victims said the death penalty brings justice to their slain daughters.
Sister Helen Prejean, author of the international best-selling book “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty” — on which the Oscar-winning movie of the same name was based — spoke at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center on Tuesday night to a crowd of students and Baton Rouge residents.
Ann Pace, mother of Charlotte Murray Pace, and Lynne Marino, mother of Pam Kinamore, attended the lecture to voice their objection to Prejean’s views.
Derrek Todd Lee was convicted in the 2003 murder of Pace and has been linked through DNA evidence to Kinamore’s slaying.
Lee has been sentenced to death for Pace’s murder and is awaiting execution at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
Prejean, a Baton Rouge native, spoke adamantly against the death penalty, using her past experience to emphasize problems with the U.S. judicial system, and reflected on her “faith journey” since her first prison experience.
Recalling her education at St. Joseph’s Academy, Prejean said she was always taught that the state had the right to take life.
“I never questioned or discussed it,” Prejean said.
But that changed after she became a nun.
In the 1980s, Prejean began visiting death-row inmate Elmo Patrick Sonnier, who proclaimed he was wrongly convicted of the murder of two teenagers because he was not adequately defended.
“If you don’t have an adequate way of getting to the truth, it won’t be revealed,” Prejean said.
Sonnier eventually admitted he had killed the teenagers and was executed, but Prejean said she still loved him and that he did not deserve death.
“They say the worst murders are punished with death penalty cases,” Prejean said. “How is one lost love one worse than another?”
But Prejean’s stories and advocacy were not comforting to Pace and Kinamore.
Pace said she is in favor of the death penalty and rejected Prejean’s claim that life in prison is an adequate punishment.
“I think there are some people who are unsafe in any venue,” she said.
Pace said she strongly resented Prejean’s message and believed Lee deserved to die.
She showed the audience photographs of her daughter before and after her death.
One photograph showed a smiling young woman. The other showed a brutally beaten, barely recognizable face.
“When we went through the trial, I thought there would be peace,” Pace said. “Because of your advocacy, and the advocacy of people like you, there will never be peace.”
Pace told Prejean that she would always fight against anti-death penalty advocates.
“You are someone who works against me,” Pace said. “Your advocacy has a very dark side.”
Marino told Prejean that she wanted justice — not vengeance — for her daughter.
“A stay of execution or even an overturned sentence gives murderers another chance,” Marino said. “Victims do not get that chance.”
Pace asked the audience to remember the silent voices of the victims in murder trials.
“Those victims’ voices should be heard even though they are gone,” Pace said.
Prejean said although she opposes the death penalty, she sympathizes with victims’ families.
“I have met people who lost loved ones who say, ‘I want to see my son’s murderer die,’” Prejean said.
Prosecutors tell juries that the death of a criminal will bring honor to the victims, Prejean said, but they do not.
“They say, ‘the respect we have for the victim’s life demands that the murderer pay with his,’” Prejean said. “They say this is the only way to get justice for the victims.”
But only 2 percent of criminals in this country are actually executed, Prejean said.
“Ninety-eight percent of families don’t get this so-called justice,” Prejean said.
Prejean said that the families of victims whose killers are executed often do not want justice — they want vengeance.
Regarding the recent California conviction of Scott Peterson, in the deaths of his wife, Lacy, and their unborn child, Connor, Prejean said Peterson’s death sentence will not bring the justice Lacy’s family expects.
Peterson will be on death row for more than twenty years, Prejean said, and the family’s waiting period will be in the public eye.
“Does that heal people?” Prejean asked the audience.
Prejean said she did not feel that the government could handle the responsibility of sentencing criminals to death.
“We can’t trust the government to fill our potholes,” she said. “How can we trust them to do this?”
Prejean said a group of Catholic bishops is currently organizing a campaign against the death penalty.
Prejean said many death penalty advocates quote the Bible to support their views, using the verse, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
When these people quote this verse, Prejean said, she responds with another verse in which Jesus tells Christians to forgive their persecutors.
Prejean said the argument that the death penalty is reserved for the “worst criminals” did not hold up.
Stuart Green, a law professor and director of the Pugh Institute, called Prejean “a leading death penalty abolitionist.”
Green said Prejean’s new book, “The Death of Innocents: an Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions,” denounces the death penalty as morally wrong and “something that cannot separate the innocent from the guilty.”
Kristel Frand, a second year law student who is against the death penalty, said she enjoyed the lecture.
“I thought it was amazing,” Frand said. “I felt for the victims’ families, but no earthly being should take someone else’s life.”
Jennifer Rickerby, a library science graduate student who is also against the death penalty, said she personally identified with many of Prejean’s opinions.
“I thought it was very good,” Rickerby said. “I’m very concerned about innocent people being sent to death row, especially African Americans.”
Prejean’s lecture was the second in a series of lectures sponsored by the Pugh Institute for Justice, a charitable organization founded in 1998 to support research and educational activities as well as a non-profit legal representation to promote justice for individuals.