Name: Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate
ISBN: 9780679751311

New!Websites for Authors

The co-op bookstore for avid readers

Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate

Helen Prejean

Paperback

Regular price$17.00With free membership trial$8.5050% off your first book+ Free shipping

In Stock– Ships within one business day

Do you recommend this book?

Yes!

When Chava Colon from the Prison Coalition asks me one January day in 1982 to become a pen pal to a death-row inmate, I say, Sure. The invitation seems to fit with my work in St. Thomas, a New Orleans housing project of poor black residents. Not death row exactly, but close. Thus begins Sister Helen Prejean's story of her encounter with the death penalty in America. When she first writes to Patrick Sonnier, the condemned killer of two teenagers, this unassuming Roman Catholic nun from a middle class Louisiana family is wholly unprepared for what will follow. As she grows to know Sonnier, she sees the terrified human being beneath the surface of the repentant killer and becomes increasingly disturbed not only by the inhumane conditions of his confinement but also by the terrible anguish he suffers during the long countdown toward execution. She also sees the moral struggles of the public officials - the governor, the head of the Department of Corrections, wardens, guards - who have to carry out killings that the law demands but that they do not personally believe in. And she comes to know the dismaying truth about the death penalty's disproportionate cost in money and resources, and how fragile and sometimes chaotic the justice system can be. Her experience soon leads her to ask: How can society benefit from replicating the violence it condemns? In formulating her answer, however, Helen Prejean also confronts the counterbalancing factors. Chief among them is the devastating rage and grief of the victims' families, whom she comes to know and befriend and whose need for retribution she understands. Prejean's indictment of capital punishment sensitively navigates the complex personal,ethical, and legal issues involved, balancing compassion for both the criminals and the people whose lives they destroy. By turns reflective and deeply personal, spiritual and candidly human, this engrossing and deeply moving meditation on one of the most painfully controversial issue

Book Details

Publisher: Vintage
Publish Date: May 31st, 1994
Pages: 304
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.00in - 5.10in - 0.70in - 0.50lb
EAN: 9780679751311
Categories: • Murder - General• Criminology• Criminal Law - General

About the Author

Helen Prejean, C. S. J., is a writer, lecturer, and community organizer who was born in Baton Rouge and has lived and worked in Louisiana all her life. Her groundbreaking firsthand account of the death penalty, Dead Man Walking, has been adapted into a movie, an opera, and a play for high schools and colleges. She is also the author of The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions. She has lectured extensively on the subject of capital punishment and has appeared on 60 Minutes, NBC's Today Show, NPR's Weekend Edition and Fresh Air, PBS's Frontline, BBC World Service radio, and an NBC special series on the death penalty. She has received honorary degrees from colleges and universities across the United States. She is a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph.

www.sisterhelen.org

More books by Helen Prejean

Book Cover for: River of Fire: On Becoming an Activist, Helen Prejean

Book Cover for: The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, Helen Prejean

Book Cover for: Dead Man Walking: Graphic Edition, Helen Prejean

What people are saying

GabrielSaidR

@GabrielSaidR

2 years

Crowley Prof. of Islamic Studies & Theology, Notre Dame. Youtube: "Exploring the Qur'an & the Bible." Author: "Allah: God in the Qur'an." Father of 5. Sinner.

What an honor last night to meet Sr. Helen Prejean (@helenprejean), a tireless advocate for inmates on death row (and inspiration for the film "Dead Man Walking"), along with my great colleague Fr. Paul Kollman. https://t.co/EoOQ5vXZwb

Recognizing and upholding excellence in the motion picture arts and sciences.

Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen Prejean in 1995's 'Dead Man Walking' which earned her the Best Actress Oscar at the 68th Academy Awards. Sarandon has been nominated for Best Actress an additional four times for 'Atlantic City,' 'Thelma & Louise,' 'Lorenzo's Oil' & 'The Client.' https://t.co/nskMJa5vla

Internet firestarter and general maker happener

Somewhere the wonderful Sister Helen Prejean is rejoicing. The actress who played her in Dead Man Walking introduced me to her at a party in the quarter ones and I felt blessed. She told me you look like either Jesus or John The Baptist !! Happy for you and us all @helenprejean https://t.co/aZAuhnAtjA

twitter.com

Praise for this book

"Deeply moving . . . Sister Prejean is an excellent writer, direct and honest and unsentimental. . . . She almost palpably extends a hand to her readers." --The New York Times Book Review

"An immensely moving affirmation of the power of religious vocation. . . . Stunning moral clarity." --The Washington Post Book World

"Here is one voice for life. We really should need no other." --The New York Review of Books

"An intimate meditation on crime and punishment, life and death, justice and mercy and--above all--Christian love in its most all-embracing sense. . . . [Prejean] never shrinks from the horror of what she has seen. She never resorts to something so predictable as pathos or a play for sympathy." --Los Angeles Times

"A remarkable writer . . . Prejean's manner of describing the tortured relations among prisoners, criminal-justice officers and victims' families would be the envy of many novelists. Even if your own views on capital punishment are set in concrete, you are sure to be moved by the force of Prejean's personality and commitment." --Glamour

"Painful and powerful . . . [Prejean's] practical moral courage is heroic." --The New Yorker

"Providing a gritty look at what really happens in the final hours of a death row inmate . . . Prejean takes readers to a place most will thankfully never know . . . adeptly probing the morality of a judicial system and a country that kills its citizens." --San Francisco Chronicle

"An impassioned condemnation of capital punishment." --Cleveland Plain Dealer

"This arresting account should do for the debate over capital punishment what the film footage from Selma and Birmingham accomplished for the civil rights movement: turn abstractions into flesh and blood. Tough, fair, bravely alive--you will not come away from this book unshaken."
--BillMcKibben

What people are saying

GabrielSaidR

@GabrielSaidR

2 years

Crowley Prof. of Islamic Studies & Theology, Notre Dame. Youtube: "Exploring the Qur'an & the Bible." Author: "Allah: God in the Qur'an." Father of 5. Sinner.

Recognizing and upholding excellence in the motion picture arts and sciences.

twitter.com