Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate

A Catholic nun shares her unique perspective of the death penalty gained through her counseling of death-row inmates
In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana's Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier's death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. At the same time, she came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute him--men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing.Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Confronting both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the needs of a crime-ridden society and the Christian imperative of love, Dead Man Walking is an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty, a book that is both enlightening and devastating.
The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading of Sister Helen Prejean's Dead Man Walking . We hope they will give you a number of interesting angles from which to consider this gripping story of two condemned men and the courageous nun who became their spiritual adviser.