The State Takes a Life

Since the 1976 Supreme Court Gregg decision opened the doors for states to revise death penalty statutes to conform with the U.S. Constitution, people opposed to the death penalty have longed for a vehicle to turn the tide of public opinion back against capital punishment. In Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean's painfully, wonderfully human and slyly informative new book, opponents of the death penalty may have found that vehicle.

Part personal memoir and part apologia for the abolition of the death penalty, Dead Man Walking tells the story of a white, middle-class Catholic sister's journey with those most affected by capital punishment - offenders, victims, and family members - and their confrontation with the criminal justice system that has dehumanized all.

Challenged by her religious community to do something about the glaring disparity of wealth between the poor and non-poor, Prejean leaves the protected world of the convent in 1981 to live in the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans. A scant six months later she is asked by Chava Colon of the Louisiana Coalition on Jails and Prisons to become a pen pal for Pat Sonnier, a man on Louisiana's death row at Angola State prison. Prejean accepts, knowing instinctively that it is a short trip from St. Thomas to Angola. When Sonnier then agrees to allow her to become his spiritual adviser, Prejean begins a journey that will transform her life.

Along the way, Prejean meets lawyers, wardens, prison guards, chaplains, pardon board members, and the family members of both victims and offenders. Through the author's compassionate and empathetic eyes, the reader sees these people, though caught up in a very bad system, as essentially good. Each person Prejean encounters strips away her naivete, develops her empathy, and challenges her to do better, even though she admits that at times she wants to withdraw.

Prejean offers engaging facts that stick with you: For example, attorneys in Louisiana receive only $1,000 to try a capital case; two-thirds of all executions take place in four southern states - Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and Georgia; there have been 417 recognized cases where persons have been falsely sentenced to death, and 23 of these people were executed.

As disturbing as this evidence is, Prejean is at her most compelling when writing about her friendships with the men on death row, especially Pat Sonnier. These sections of the narrative read like good fiction, but sadly for all those involved, it is true.

Pat Sonnier was imprisoned for murder. He and his brother Eddy had kidnapped David LeBlanc and Loretta Bourque, driven them 20 miles into an abandoned oil field, raped Loretta, and shot each three times in the back of the head. Sonnier expressed remorse, saying that he will "go to his grave feeling bad about those kids." The man Prejean comes to know isn't at all what she had expected.

At the time of Sonnier's execution, Prejean cannot watch. On the drive back to New Orleans, she pulls off the side of the road to vomit.

Prejean is most challenged by the family members of the victims. "Sister, I'm a Catholic. How can you present Elmo Patrick Sonnier's side without ever having come to visit me or the Bourques to hear our side?" Lloyd LeBlanc, David's father, had asked her at Sonnier's pardon board hearing. The accusation cut into Prejean.

Lloyd LeBlanc leaves the greatest impression with the reader. Prejean ends her narrative with the story of their 4 a.m. meeting in a small perpetual adoration chapel in St. Martinville, Louisiana. The reader learns that he prays for the Sonniers and, in fact, went to see Mrs. Sonnier shortly before she died. On the night that he went to the field to identify the body of his son, he prayed the Our Father over him. When he came to the part about forgiving their trespasses, he said, "whoever did this, I forgive them."

It is appropriate that this gentle and uncommonly good man have the last say. One only wishes that he had showed up more frequently in this otherwise fine book.

Nonetheless, Dead Man Walking will hearten those initiated in the struggle to abolish the death penalty, but will deeply disquiet the uninitiated, forever transforming the ways that they think about the death penalty.

Chris Byrd is the director of peace and justice for the Diocese of Birmingham, Alabama, and a longtime activist in the movement to abolish the death penalty.