Sister Helen Prejean Recounts How She Became a Leader of the U.S. Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty

Excerpts of a speech by Sister Helen Prejean, death penalty opponent, produced by Melinda Tuhus

Sister Helen Prejean is one of the country's best-known and most passionate opponents of the death penalty. She has been speaking out since the early 1980s, when she accompanied convicted murderer Patrick Sonnier to his execution by electrocution. She wrote the book "Dead Man Walking" about her experience, which later became an Academy Award-winning movie with Susan Sarandon playing Prejean in the leading role.

Sister Prejean spoke earlier this month at Yale University's Catholic chapel, where she made reference to Connecticut's death penalty law which was recently challenged and debated in the state legislature, though the law authorizing execution by lethal injection was not abolished. Serial rapist and murderer Michael Ross will be executed in Connecticut on May 11 unless a federal judge rules in the next few weeks that he was incompetent to waive his remaining appeals and choose to die. This would mark the first execution in all of New England in 45 years.

Sister Prejean's talk at Yale followed a recent report in Britain's top medical journal, The Lancet, which argued that some prisoners executed by lethal injection may feel extreme pain because they are improperly sedated as they are put to death.

For more information on Sister PreJean's campaign against the death penalty, call (504) 948-6557 or visit her website at www.prejean.org. Prejean's talk was recorded and produced by Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus.

Related links:

* The Death Penalty Information Center www.deathpenaltyinfo.org

* Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation www.mvfr.org

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