Dead Men Still Walking: A First Hand Account of Death Row by Death Penalty Activist Sister Helen Prejean

What’s it like to be sentenced to death—for a crime you did not commit?

Sister
Helen Prejean—perhaps the most famous Roman Catholic nun in the
U.S.—knows better than most. A spiritual advisor to death row inmates
for more than 25 years, she’s also America’s most famous advocate for
ending the death penalty.
 In 1982, Sister Helen unexpectedly became the spiritual
adviser to death row inmate Patrick Sonnier, convicted of killing two
teenagers, who had been sentenced to die in the electric chair of
Louisiana's Angola State Prison. Witnessing his execution prompted her
to write the bestselling Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States (Random
House, 1993), which became a movie for which Susan Sarandon won the
Oscar for playing Sister Helen—and sparking a nationwide debate over the
death penalty’s injustice.  


Sister Helen says that 80 percent of those on death
row live in the ten Southern states that practiced slavery, and that 80
percent of those executed are poor people who kill white people. “When
people of color get killed in this country, it doesn’t even hit the
radar screen in district attorneys’ offices,” she says.
 Sister Helen is an electrifying speaker, whose paired
sense of humor and sense of moral urgency make it clear why her work has
helped transform American attitudes and laws. Her gripping talk at
Brandeis’s Spingold Theater in 2006 was standing room only.

The rare
opportunity to hear her, live and in person, is not to be missed. Please
join us as Sister Helen talks about the true costs of death row.

 
Sponsored by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism
Contact person and email: Liz Eckley, lizm010@brandeis.edu