Imagine being asked to become a pen pal with a prisoner on death row.
Would you accept the offer, or shove it off as a ridiculous suggestion?
This question became real for those in Levin Ballroom last Thursday night as a result of the experiences and thoughts shared by Sister Helen Prejean, a nun from New Orleans, during a lecture titled "Dead Man Still Walking: A First Hand Account of Death Row." The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism along with 12 other campus groups sponsored the event as a part of this year's 'Deis Impact. Prejean was also a featured lecturer in the 'Deis Impact college, a series of open lectures on a wide range of topics.
Founding director of the Schuster Institute Florence Graves introduced Prejean as "the country's most famous advocate for ending the death penalty," and "an extraordinary activist and human being." Prejean became well known in this country after writing her 1993 best seller, Dead Man Walking.
The book was later adapted into a film and starred Sean Penn as Matthew Poncelet, the character inspired by Prejean's prisoner pen pal, Patrick Sonnier, and Susan Sarandon, who won best actress for the role as Prejean. Prejean also wrote a second novel, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.
After presenting a poignant clip of the Film Dead Man Walking, Prejean began her lecture by explaining that her activism stems from Justice Louis Brandeis' work for justice.
"You drew me here because of [what] Brandeis is as a university," Prejean said. "You bear the name of a man of justice."
She then began her story of how her book was transformed into an award-winning movie. After receiving a phone call from Sarandon, who was the first person to express that she wanted to transform the book into a movie. Prejean agreed to a meeting with her.
She then praised Sarandon with her performance as an actor. "Susan Sarandon defines the vocation of acting as in forced compassion, getting inside people's skin and their lives. I just want to hold up that the acting profession is a worthy," she said. "Anything we're gonna do ... to understand about a dimension about human rights and to get that word out there is worth doing, is worth giving our lives to.
"None of them could see [the book] as a box office success," Prejean said on how all the Hollywood studios turned down the screenplay. Little did these studios know that the film would receive four nominations and Sarandon would win an Academy Award.
Prejean started her work as an anti-death penalty activist when she was leaving the adult learning center in New Orleans and was approached by a man who worked in the prison coalition office.
He asked her if she would be interested in becoming a pen pal to a prisoner on death row.
Prejean accepted the offer, and wrote a letter to Patrick Sonnier who, along with his accomplice and brother, Eddie Sonnier was charged with raping and murdering Loretta Ann Bourque and murdering David LeBlanc.
She eventually became the spiritual adviser to Sonnier.
"I wrote that first letter never dreaming that two, two and a half year later he [was] going to be killed in the electric chair and I [was] gonna be with him when he dies," she said. After visiting him and gaining a trusting relationship with Sonnier, Prejean realized, "we're all just human beings, that's all we are."
In addition to describing the relationship she built with Sonnier as well as his brother (who was also convicted for rape and murder although not sentenced to death), Prejean also explained the relationships she formed with the families of the victims who were killed by the Sonniers and the lessons they taught her.
Prejean was especially fond of David LeBlanc's father, whom she described as the hero of the story. "[Mr. LeBlanc] was the first one who taught me that what forgiveness means is not letting hatred overcome you," Prejean said.
Prejean further reflected on the feelings of the victim's families, saying they realized that "they are not going to honor their name by having the government using the name of the victim and then kill a human being," she said.
She then recalled some families saying, "death penalty re-victimizes us."
Prejean concluded the event with a question and answer session. Among these questions included how Prejean suggests others take action on this issue. "It never hurts to write the mayor to your city, and you say well he doesn't have any kind of legal power. But when you're talking about the voice of the people, you talk about discourse in the community ... never underestimate that [power]," she suggested.
In response to another question she was asked, Prejean responded with a question of her own: "Does the death penalty deter crime?" To which the people in the audience replied no. "If you look at the track record of the states that have practiced the death penalty the most ... and you look at the violence rate, its roughly double that than in the states that don't have the death penalty," Prejean said.
Although obviously a woman with a religious background, attendees of the lecture were impressed with her ability to avoid religious beliefs in her lecture. "It was very good to hear from somebody who is in a religious position but was very nondenominational and secular, who didn't bore us with statistics but gave us stories and actual accounts of people who have suffered firsthand the injustice that is the death penalty," attendee Arlene Cordorez '17 said.
"She's the best person I've ever met," Terrell Gilkey '15 said. "It takes a great person to see the humanity in a person who has done things like that. But she looked into his eyes and saw a human being, and that's amazing."