Prejean - Dead man walking: the eyewitness account of the death penalty that sparked a national debate

An immensely moving affirmation of the power of religious vocation. Stunning moral clarity a profound argument against capital punishment.

Washington Post Book World

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 Prejeans 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 Prejeans personality and commitment.

Glamour

Painful and powerful [Prejeans] 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.

Bill McKibben

It is [Sister Helen Prejeans] experience that is important in the book the need to serve life in a context of death. She tells her story with a quiet eloquence, not indulging in diatribe or personal attack. Here is one voice for life. We really should need no other.

Garry Wills, The New York Review of Books

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. She has lectured extensively on the subject of capital punishment and has appeared on ABC World News Tonight, 60 Minutes, BBC World Service radio, and an NBC special series on the death penalty. Her articles have appeared in publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, the St. Petersburg Times, the Baltimore Sun and the St. Anthony Messenger. She is a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille.

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JUNE 1994

Copyright 1993 by Helen Prejean

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1993

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material.

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.. Excerpt from Resistance, Rebellion and Death by Albert Camus, translated by J OBrien Copyright 1960 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Five lines from The Warning from The Panther and the Lash by Langston Hughes. Copyright 1967 by Arna Bontemps and George Huston Bass.
Reprinted by permission of Alfred A Knopf, Inc.

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc Excerpts from Wild Justice The Evolution of Revenge by Susan Jacoby. Copyright 1983 by Susan Jacoby. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Prejean, Helen.
Dead man walking an eyewitness account of the death penalty in the United States / Helen Prejean.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78769-9
1. Capital punishment United States. 2. Capital punishment Religious aspects. I. Title.
HV8699.U5P74 1994
93-43877

v3.1

To my mother, Gusta Mae, and my father, Louis, who loved me into life

I want to thank those who helped me write this book.

Jason Epstein, my editor at Random House, took a chance on a first-time author and guided me through three revisions. Finding him was a great surprise. I didnt know that a top-notch editor at such a large publishing house cared enough to work so patiently with a neophyte author. Julie Grau, Maryam Mohit, and Mallay Charters, Jasons coworkers, have also been immeasurably helpful. Gloria Loomis, my energetic, dedicated literary agent, with her coworkers, Kendra Taylor and Nicole Aragi, have been a steady source of encouragement and support during the two years it has taken to write this book. Jason DeParle, Lisa and Michael Radelet, Bill McKibben, and Sue Halpern have been with me through all three revisions, offering invaluable advice.

A host of people read the manuscript and offered suggestions: Liz and Art Scott, Tom Dybdahl, Judy Rittenhouse, Mary Riley, Millard Farmer, Ronald J. Tabak, Leigh Dingerson, Richard Dieter, Hugo Adam Bedau, Ronnie Friedman Barone, Bill and Debbie Quigley, Magdaleno Rose-Avila, Charles McGowan, Rosemary Lewis, and members of my religious community Sisters Jane Louise Arbour, Julie Sheatzley, Barbara Hughes, and Jean Fryoux.

Many helped me get information: Neal Walker, Nicholas Trenticosta, Gary Clements, Barbara Warren, Alice Miller, Howard Zehr, Russ Immarigeon, Marc Mauer, Wilbert Rideau, Ron Wikberg, Sam Dalton, Ginger Berrigan, Michael Kroll, Dianne Kidner, Gerald Bosworth, C. Paul Phelps, Howard Marsellus, Peggy Norris, Pam and Keith Rutter, Allen Johnson, Jr., Jonathan Eig, Janet Yassen, Jonathan Gradess, Dennis Kalob, Michael Small, John Craft, Bob Gross, Bill Pelke, Karima Wick, Lloyd LeBlanc, and Elizabeth and Vernon Harvey.

I have received immeasurable support and encouragement from the staff at Hope House in New Orleans: Odessa Carew, Idella Casimier, Don Everard, Sister Lilianne Flavin, O.P., Ethel George, Brother Virgil Harris, S.C., Elaine Henry, Jarldine Johnson, Shirley Lemon, Patricia Robinson, Patrick Stevenson, Thero Stevenson, Melvin Thompson, and Brother Brendan Wilkinson, F.S.C.

Joan Benham, Shelley Garren, and Dennis Ambrose at Random House painstakingly worked on the manuscript and Walter Weintz, Bridget Marmion, Carol Schneider, and Becky Simpson worked hard to publicize the book.

Finally, I am grateful for the love, friendship, and moral support I have received from my religious community, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, and from my family, and my good friend, Ann Barker.

Ive heard that there are two situations that make interesting stories: when an extraordinary person is plunged into the commonplace and when an ordinary person gets involved in extraordinary events. Im definitely an example of the latter. I stepped quite unsuspectingly from a protected middle-class environment into one of the most explosive and complex moral issues of our day, the question of capital punishment.