Sister Helen Prejean speaks out against capital punishment

As a nun who has witnessed capital punishment firsthand, Sister Helen Prejean has made it her personal crusade to pursue the abolition of the death penalty.

Prejean — who is the author of The New York Times bestseller "Dead Man Walking" — spoke Saturday in the University chapel to a 500-person audience primarily composed of students and members of various area religious groups.

Punctuated by her humor, tenacity and Southern twang, Prejean's message that death penalty should be abolished was unmistakably clear.

Prejean — who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998, 1999 and again this year — said she did not intend to become a spokeswoman for the cause, but circumstances caused her to become increasingly involved with the issue.

Coming from an affluent background in Louisiana, she became a nun and worked with poor inner-city residents in New Orleans. When asked to be a pen pal to an inmate on death row, she agreed.

"The death penalty is a poor person's issue," she said, adding that at the time, she knew little about the controversy. "Saying 'Look at me —look at my face' when they were gonna execute him, I never dreamed that would happen."

Prejean said when she found out the inmate had no one to come see him, she visited him in prison, emphasizing to the audience that she did so as a response to human need rather than as an attempt at personal heroics.

"I looked through this heavy mesh screen at a man who was being kept in a room the size of a telephone booth — and saw the eyes of a human being," she said.

Prejean said she accompanied the inmate to his death in the electric chair, intent on treating him with dignity despite the sense of personal outrage she felt for his victims and their families. Since then, she has accompanied four others to their executions.

"How could I turn away from those deaths, knowing I've been a witness?" she asked during her speech. "If the people of this country really knew what was going on, they would reject the death penalty," she said, noting that 15 people are currently on death row in New Jersey.

Prejean said she believed it was her responsibility to bring her experiences to light and to tell the stories of death row inmates, their families and their victims' families. She pointed out that death penalty supporters, including legislators, often do not fully realize the horror of its reality, which she termed a "staged death."

"All the people who talked about it and had the most rhetoric about it are not there," she said.

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Prejean also spoke about the aim of her Pulitzer-Prize nominated book, whose main character is a composite of the first two death row inmates she counseled. Despite her own stance, Prejean said she tried to present many sides of the death penalty, ranging from the shame of the inmate's family, to the strain of prison guards and to the grief of victims' families.

"[I tried to] take people to both sides so that it would take them to a deeper part of their hearts to reflect on the death penalty," she said.

Prejean's book attracted the attention of actress Susan Sarandon, who called Prejean to express interest in a film version of "Dead Man Walking." Though Prejean said at the time she was not familiar with any of Sarandon's films, the actress went on to win an Oscar for her role as Sister Helen Prejean.