An interview with Sister Helen Prejean
Sister Helen Prejean, author of the best-selling book turned award-winning movie, "Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States," was in town this weekend to attend the Missouri premiere of the opera based on her book. Union Avenue Opera is presenting "Dead Man Walking," which first premiered in 2000 in San Francisco. Performances continue this weekend at Union Avenue Church, 733 N. Union.
Since witnessing the execution of a man on Louisiana's death row, Prejean has been a passionate advocate against the death penalty and revamping our courts system. During her stay in St. Louis, she
spoke with the Jewish Light about her book and her work.
When you first wrote your book, "Dead Man Walking," what did you want to happen?
I didn't have many expectations. All I wanted to do was write a true and good story about my experiences. When I came out of that execution chamber where I saw a man electrocuted to death, I threw up. I had never watched anyone being killed in front of my eyes. Most people are not affected by the death penalty and this secret ritual. I was a witness to it and had to tell the story.
Did anything ever happen to you personally to draw you to this cause? Did you know someone who was wrongly convicted and subsequently executed?
No. When I moved into the poor communities of African Americans in the inner city projects someone from the prison coalition asked me to be a pen pal to a prisoner on death row. When you witness the direct killing of a human being like that I couldn't walk away from it. I then began working with victims' families and helping them deal with their grief. We started a group in New Orleans called Survive, a victims' advocacy group. We stay with families and let them express their grief. Seventy percent of families who lose a child end up divorced.
How do you reconcile with families of murder victims their desire for revenge and the death penalty?
Death Row Syndrome - News
Since witnessing the execution of a man on Louisiana's death row, Prejean has been a passionate advocate against the death penalty and revamping our courts system. During her stay in St. Louis, she spoke with the Jewish Light about her book and her
When the state of Arkansas agreed earlier this month to release death row inmate Damien Echols and co-defendants Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, it succumbed to a secret, lavishly funded defense investigation that tapped the deep pockets of
None of this lingering on Death Row for 14 years, getting a college diploma and recruiting liberal elitists to take up your, “I'm just poor and misunderstood” cause. If we started executing more murderers, and doing it within 6 months of sentencing,
By the same criteria, the clemency plea written by the Fine Gael candidate Gay Mitchell on behalf of a Florida death row inmate convicted of killing two people at an abortion clinic in 1994 becomes significant. It can be read as both honourable
A clemency-board rookie takes interest in the case of a woman on death row for 12 years for a double murder. (R) (1:45) TMC: Fri. 2:45 PM (CC) • Last Holiday '06. Queen Latifah. Upon learning of a terminal illness, a shy woman decides to sell off all
A worldwide perspective: how long should prisoners be held on ...
Manuel Valle was sentenced to death, aged 27, on the 10th of May 1978 for murdering a police officer earlier that year. He is now aged 61 and still on death row in Florida awaiting execution after 33 years. He has been tried and sentenced to death three times, as his first two trials were found to have been unconstitutional.
According to the Florida Department of Corrections website , Florida’s death row cells are strictly solitary and are only 6 x 9 x 9.5 feet high. The prisoners are confined to their cells at all times except during the one hour a day they are allowed to spend in the exercise yard, once every two days when they can shower, or on the rare occasions they receive a visit. There is no prisoner-to-prisoner contact at all, and the guards are told not to talk to death row prisoners, to avoid prison guards humanising or fraternising with someone who they will eventually have to take to the execution gurney. The ‘exercise yard’ is extremely limited; an article in the New York Times in 2002 revealed that there is no gym equipment, and one prisoner described himself as ‘feeling like a lab rat walking around in a circle’. Mike Lambrix, who has been on Florida’s death row for 25 years, writes that ‘in my personal experience I can tell you that the conditions we must “live” under far exceed any objective definition of “cruel and unusual” punishment’.
Outside the USA, death row conditions are equally deplorable. In Kampala prison in Uganda , for example, the death row that was built to hold 15 prisoners now holds 380. As many as 8 people can be crammed into these originally one-man cells. There is no toilet and it is very common for prisoners to die in their cells of diseases like tuberculosis and scabies.
Another problem in many countries around the world is the time prisoners have to spend in prison on capital charges before they are even tried and found to be guilty – or innocent. For example, Naheem Hussain and Rehan Zaman have been in prison in Pakistan awaiting trial on capital charges for seven years now, despite compelling evidence of their innocence. Similarly, Muhammad Hanif spent four years in a Pakistani prison awaiting trial for a crime he did not commit, before finally being acquitted.
Death Row Syndrome - Bookshelf
Death, the final stage of growth
Since the dawn of humankind, the human mind has pondered death, searching for the answer to its mysteries. For the key to the question of death unlocks the ...Death
Offers various viewpoints on death and dying, including those of ministers, rabbis, doctors, nurses, and sociologists, along with personal accounts of those ...Death, The Final Mystery
An investigative look at the last moments of life and beyond -- near-death and out-of-body experiences, reincarnation theories, and other phenomena.What Is Death?
This book is the third in author Etan Boritzer's popular series, following the success of What Is God? and What Is Love?Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather's best known novel; a narrative that recounts a life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. From the Trade Paperback edition.Perfect Information Directory
Death row phenomenon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The death row phenomenon, also known as the death row syndrome, is a term used to refer to the emotional distress felt by prisoners on death row. ...
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Death Row Syndrome While the term "death row phenomenon" refers to the particular ... term "death row syndrome" has been used to describe the resulting psychological harms of ...
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Waiting to Die: The Cruel Phenomenon of "Death Row Syndrome" ... The United States' 3,300 death row inmates can now expect to wait an average of 12 years ...