Pen pal nun befriended man condemned to death

When Sister Helen Prejean first agreed to become the pen pal of a man on death row, she… When Sister Helen Prejean first agreed to become the pen pal of a man on death row, she didn’t realize what she was getting herself into.

“Sure, I could write a few letters,” Sister Helen said Saturday afternoon in the William Pitt Union, where she came to discuss her experiences in a panel discussion.

She had no idea that the letters would lead her to make visits to Louisiana’s Angola State prison. This is where she met Patrick Sonnier face to face, who was convicted of raping and killing two teen-agers. And this is where she watched him die, years later, in the electric chair.

After Sonnier first met Sister Helen, he had one request for her.

“He wrote back to me [and] asked that I become his spiritual adviser,” Sister Helen said.

She couldn’t refuse, and it didn’t take long for the nun and the prisoner to establish a friendship.

“I never dreamed they would kill him,” Sister Helen told her audience.

But Sonnier was killed in 1984, when 1900 volts of electricity passed through his body three separate times.

The night of Sonnier’s execution, Sister Helen walked with him and said, “Look at me. Look at my face. Tonight, I will be the face of Christ for you”.

She was with him until his death, and soon after, became an outspoken activist against capital punishment.

“The death penalty shows that all we can think to do is imitate the violence,” Sister Helen explained. “Forgiveness is there for those asking.”

While spiritually advising Sonnier, Sister Helen admits to making one mistake.

“I was a coward,” she said. “I was a coward because I was afraid to approach the families of the victims.”

But she has learned from this, she said, and now works as an advocate for the families of murder victims.

Since her experience with Sonnier, Sister Helen has served as the spiritual adviser to several other inmates on death row.

“Right now, I am advising a sixth person,” she said.

But it was Sonnier’s story that inspired her to write the book “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.” Her book was later developed into a major motion picture, starring Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen and Sean Penn as a death-row inmate.

Sister Helen’s book was nominated for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize, and was also at the top of the New York Times Best Seller list for 31 weeks. Sister Helen is now working on writing another book, titled “Death of Innocence.”

Saturday’s discussion, hosted by Pitt Arts, explored the role faith plays in inspiring leaders in religious communities to work for social justice. The two other panelists attending the event were Venerable Shih Ying-Fa, a spiritual leader at the Zen Center of Cleveland, and Jamal El Amin, national chair for Millati Islami, or The Path of Peace.