Dead Man Walking : An Eyewitness
Account of the Death Penalty in the United States
by Sr. Helen Prejean
Completed July 2001
Sr. Prejean writes a very personal account -- weaving her own story, doubts, fears and anxieties into the larger story of the death penalty in Louisiana. The net effect was a real mixture of emotions for me. I find it hard to identify with her (in part because I could feel that she was trying to cast both victims and criminals in as positive a light as she could). Mostly, though, she was befriending despicable people -- I agree with her that God calls us to love our enemies, but it is so hard to feel the same way when they have done such horrible things and seem in some ways repentant and in other ways not at all. This is, I suppose, the crux of the issue and the reason she writes the book. Although many of these criminals were not likeable, she humanizes them and in so doing forces us to confront the fact that we are all God's creations...and that He calls us to love everyone and have compassion for killers too (which in this case means keeping them in prison forever instead of killing them).
In a nutshell, I guess I was against the death penalty before reading this book, and certainly remained so after completing it, though I wasn't enamored with the book -- either because of the style or the fact that the subject matter is hard to read; probably a little of both.