Best-selling author speaks out against death penalty
   Sister Helen Prejean, acclaimed writer of the best-selling book “Dead Man Walking,” spoke Tuesday night at Christ the King Catholic Student Center supporting her anti capital punishment organization, the Moratorium Campaign.
Sister Prejean, who grew up in Baton Rouge and attended St. Joseph’s High School, tours the United States acquiring more signatures for her already extensive petition against the death penalty.
Prejean, who returned from Texas, the state with the highest rate of capital punishment, said she was eager to convince others who support the death penalty to think otherwise.
Prejean reported the United States joins nations like Iraq, Iran and Pakistan in allowing the death penalty.
“I don’t feel pressure to sway the whole world,” Prejean said. “I simply want us to join the nations of the world who support love and humanity.”
Many of those who attended the event had read the book or seen the movie.
“I read the book and rented the movie, but I was still undecided about capital punishment,” said Erin Newby, a communication disorders senior. “I wanted to hear what Sister Prejean had to say about it in a more direct way.”
As she continued, Prejean spoke of her time at the Angola prison.
She recalled feeling like she betrayed the victim’s families while counseling death row inmates.
The presentation climaxed as she explained her first meeting with Lloyd LeBlanc, the father of one victim.
“He wanted me to pray with him,” Prejean said. “When I agreed, he prayed for the family of the murderers, not his family. He sent the mother of his son’s killer a fruit basket because she was being ostracized from the community. I had never seen love like his. It showed me that God really does work through people you don’t expect.”
“Dead Man Walking,” which featured Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, was adapted to an opera in San Francisco.
“The opera was more interesting than the movie,” said Prejean. “In the opera, there are about two minutes of silence when the guards are performing the actual execution. It was very powerful.”
Prejean has planned a sequel to “Dead Man Walking” titled “Innocence Betrayed.”
Because her publication has received so much praise and her views are met with much controversy, she was allowed counsel with Pope John Paul II.
Sister Prejean asked him to change the catechism to not allow capital punishment.
“I explained to him that people were using the loophole in the catechism that allowed capital punishment for grave crimes. Everything is a grave crime when it happens to you,” Prejean said.
As tensions in the room grew thicker, Sister Prejean finished with the question on which she bases her campaign.
“Can watching someone be killed heal the human heart?” asked Prejean.
Tim Basilica