Dead Man Walking

Given Prejean’s reputation as one the leading death penalty abolitionists in the United States, it may be surprising to see, on the very first page of the book, that she came upon that topic somewhat by accident and with a degree of reluctance. Prejean had spent decades as an educator, and by her account, she and her order alike were relatively new to the social justice wing of Church ministry. In her early encounters with social justice, Prejean came to see the world in terms of systems that consistently disadvantage certain groups of people based on race, gender, class, and other factors. Her native Louisiana’s “misery statistics are the highest in the nation…where half the adult population has not completed high school, where one in every six persons is a food-stamp recipient, one of every three babies born has an unwed mother, and the violent crime rate is ninth highest in the nation” (7). Providing this biography imparts a sense that Prejean came to this issue as an “average” person, and it has the effect of undermining any ideas that Prejean’s beliefs about capital punishment are reducible to some predisposition or bias.

In this opening section of the book, Prejean also begins to unpack her arguments for The Injustice of the Death Penalty. Prejean published this book more than a decade after beginning her work with Pat Sonnier, and by that time she had developed the knowledge and experience to understand and explain how capital punishment is part of an oppressive system, both in terms of what it does to the people involved and in terms of the resources it takes from other vital services. At the time her work on death row seemed like a significant departure from her work in downtown New Orleans. Pat Sonnier is a white man, whereas Prejean’s work has focused on the majority-Black communities of New Orleans disproportionately subjected to imprisonment and the death penalty even as the government slashed funding for affordable housing, healthcare, and education. And then there is Sonnier’s crime, an act of astonishing, willful cruelty compared to the more quotidian violence that often haunts the lives of the desperately poor. Therefore, when Prejean initiates contact with Sonnier, it is more a friendship under unusual conditions than a political act. By her own admission, she doesn’t know “anything about the legal issues in these cases” (14), assuming that death penalty convicts received legal resources commensurate with their media attention. But Prejean soon learns that this is not the case, and these facts become a key reason for her belief that the death penalty should be abolished.

Researching the nightmarish details of Sonnier’s case, and comparing that with his silence regarding his crime, Prejean is mostly concerned with Sonnier Accepting Personal Responsibility for his actions, seeking forgiveness from both his victims’ families and God. His easygoing manner with Prejean, and his obvious gratitude for her engagement, is a clear sign that he is not a monster, that kindness toward him may awaken his capacity for kindness toward others. To be sure, Prejean has already concluded that even in the worst of circumstances, “I would not want my death avenged. Especially by the government—which can’t be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill” (21). Before long, however, this core conviction evolves into the idea that it is not only Sonnier who needs to take responsibility for his actions, but also the state that has ordained his death and the individuals charged with carrying out such a terrible task. Ultimately, Prejean will demand the entire criminal justice system take full account of its own actions, even if these larger structural crimes in no way obviate the need for repentance among the condemned.