Dead Man Walking

Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States is a memoir originally published in 1993 by Sister Helen Prejean. In the book, Prejean, a Catholic nun with the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Medaille (now the Congregation of Saint Joseph), describes her ministry to death-row inmates Elmo Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie in Louisiana in the early 1980s. Her experience with Sonnier, who was ultimately put to death in 1984, turned her strongly against capital punishment and prompted what has since been a lifetime of activism and ministry to inmates, their families, and the families of victims. The book has had a major influence on the debate over capital punishment in the United States, spending 31 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and winning widespread critical praise. In 1995, Tim Robbins adapted the book into a film starring Susan Sarandon as Prejean and Sean Penn as a fictionalized combination of Sonnier and Willie named Matthew Poncelet. The film was both a commercial and critical success, most notably earning Sarandon an Academy Award for Best Actress. In 2000, it debuted as an opera in San Francisco and has been performed in many cities in the United States and around the world ever since.

This summary is based on the paperback Vintage Books Edition (New York: 1994).

Content Warning: This book contains many descriptions of violent crime, including murder and rape, along with the emotional anguish suffered by the victims’ families. It also goes into graphic detail regarding the execution of prisoners.

Summary

The book begins with Prejean in New Orleans, working at a local housing project, when she receives an offer to exchange letters with a death-row inmate named Elmo Pat Sonnier at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola. Initially skeptical, especially given Sonnier’s conviction for a gruesome rape and double murder, Prejean’s exposure to the realities of capital punishment ultimately turns her strongly against the practice. While acknowledging the horror of Sonnier’s crime, the anguish of victims’ families, and the need for his incarceration, she finds capital punishment to be structurally unjust by virtue of targeting poor (most often Black) convicts with white victims; she also protests the lax protections against prosecutorial misconduct or ineffective counsel and the sheer process of dehumanization that a person endures while waiting to be put to death. Louisiana law requires proof of a desire to kill in order to merit a death penalty, and Prejean watches in horror as valid questions regard Sonnier’s precise degree of guilt are dismissed out of hand. Prejean also observes how it is nearly impossible to halt or even slow the mass bureaucracy organized around putting people to death.

After Sonnier’s execution, Prejean decides to become a regular spiritual advisor to the condemned, as well as a public advocate for death penalty abolition. She next begins correspondence with Robert Lee Willie, whose guilt seems more certain and whose attitude is far more cavalier, going so far as to taunt victims and their families in court. Despite these complications, Prejean still provides spiritual counsel and once again advocates for commutation of his sentence to life without parole, although in this case her efforts are even less successful than with Sonnier. Following Willie’s execution, Prejean begins a nationwide campaign of abolition and also puts more emphasis on healing for victims’ families. Abolishing the death penalty and helping the victims of crime through their rage and grief is for Prejean all part of a broader effort to dislodge vengeance from the center of the criminal justice system and replace it with mercy.