Dead Man Walking
An interview with Sister Helen Prejean


Last updated:  16 November 1997

A LIVE NUN TALKING ABOUT DEAD MAN WALKING

by Alan Moroney:   An interview with Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ

     Sister Helen Prejean became a nun in 1957.  After Vatican Council II she was sent out of her convent to work amongst the poor of New Orleans.  In 1982 she was asked to write to Patrick Sonnier, a French speaking Cajun on Louisiana's death row.  Two years later she witnessed his death in the electric chair.  She has also written to and witnessed the execution of Lee Willie, a white supremacist.    The character Sean Penn plays in the film is a composite of Sonnier and Willie. 

Alan Moroney [AM]:
How come Tim Robbins got involved?

Helen Prejean [HP]:
He got involved because of his wife Susan Sarandon.  She was in Memphis filming The Client and someone gave her a copy of my book.  She had to come to New Orleans to for two days of filming, so she called me and said "I'm reading your book and I'm always interested in substance of character so I'd like to meet you."

So I met her in a restaurant and then we began to talk and I really liked her because I knew I had to find really trustworthy people to do a film of my book.  You know I wasn't real anxious for Hollywood to do it.  "Well", she said, "I really think Tim would be interested in producing, directing and making this film, let me bring him the book", which she did.  He read it and called me.  I travelled up to New York, met both of them and we talked about how the film could be shaped and I liked everything he said.  He was, you know, not going to pull any gimmicks, not throw in any Hollywood sensationalism.  I knew then that he would tell the story straight and true, so I said "go to it Tim".

[AM]:
Wasn't he in another film where Julia Roberts got dragged from the Gas Chamber?

[HP]:
He did The Player, which had a similar theme, though yes, that did have a Hollywood happy ending.

[AM]:
Well, it's your life and events that have happened in it and now it has been sceenplayed.  What do you think of their interpretation?

[HP]:
I think what's wonderful about is that we bring people very close to the reality of what it means to say that you will allow the State to kill people.  It brings people close to the whole process and takes it out of the realm of abstraction and rhetoric.

The other thing is that it brings in all the dimensions, the death row inmate and his family, the prison officials involved, the suffering of the murder victim's family - and it's complex, it's not simplistic.  It shows you one murder victim's family who are all for revenge and because of their loss you can understand that.  But then you see another murder victim's father in the movie kind of making his way out from under that because he does not want the hate overtake him.

The reason I like it most is because it also has redemption in it, and the call for unconditional love.  This is not just a horror story about an execution and a terrible crime, but it has and is a story of redemption.  And you know, I love the way he pushed all the moral issues in this film.  He took away the electric chair and said we need to use lethal injection because we don't want to give people the moral out whereby people could say "oh well, we used to do electrocution but that's too barbaric so now we are humane and inject them".  And people in the United States are flocking to the movie theaters to see it.

[AM]:
In the book a lot of events happened around St. Martinville.

[HP]:
Yes, in Arcadia.

[AM]:
Cajun country.  It's like a beautiful French village, not concreted out of town shopping mall America many towns seem to be.

[HP]:
No, definitely not.

[AM]:
I find the area very like Catholic Europe.  It's not Bible-belt or puritan but rather has an exciting joie de vivre with great food, no hang-ups about alcohol or having fun.  Also, like most Catholic states and countries it is very strongly family orientated which also tends to allow full scale corruption.  However these other states do not allow or like executions, so how come Louisiana does?

[HP]:
It is very much like you say, but it is also a part of the southern states.  I mean it is part of the southern mentality.  Over 70% 0f all executions occur in southern states and Catholics fall into that mentality just like other people do.  You know when you hear of these terrible crimes, the instinct for revenge is very strong.  Here the government says we have to teach people a lesson and we have to give the most severe example of punishment we can so that it will curtail crime.

[AM]:
What does the prison warden [the "prison governor" in the UK] think about executions?

[HP]:
The new warden, Burl Cain, is very conflicted about the death penalty.  In fact he let Prime Time Live film the inside of the execution chamber.  He is letting the media get very close.

We just had a man executed in Louisiana, Antonio James, and he let them put a camera on the bar of his cell and film the last seven days of his life.  He even let the TV crew come with the strap-down team while they practised ready to bring to the execution chamber.  He wants to get it out of the realm of the abstract.

[AM]:
He is the one that has to do it.

[HP]:
Exactly.  He's the first trigger.  They don't start the execution until he nods his head.

[AM]:
He is there to run a prison.

[HP]:
Right, and that is precisely what he would like to be left to get on with.

[AM]:
How come Sean Penn got the part?

[HP]:
Tim absolutely knew that there was one person who could really make the film and that was Sean Penn, but he had a challenge because Sean had announced that he had given up acting and was only going to direct.  So he sent Sean the screenplay and asked him to read it and within two weeks Sean responded and said "when you read a script and your tears have fallen on a page, then you know it's something you have to do".

[AM]:
He has a bad boy image.

[HP]:
Yeah, yeah he does.  (in a motherly voice)

[AM]:
But he's made some good films.

[HP]:
He has.  In fact his own film The Crossing Guard had one of the same themes as Dead Man Walking about wanting revenge and satisfying it.

[AM]:
I haven't seen that one yet, though I saw his first attempt at directing, which was a film called The Indian Runner, which he based on a Bruce Sprngsteen song called Highway Patrolman.  I was impressed.  It is all very different to his public image of Mr. Madonna.

[HP]:
I know, he lives under that shadow all the time.  You know, Alan, I never mentioned Madonna once during filming, though he did say to me laughing "Helen, my momma said to tell you that she's glad I'm in a movie with a nun".  (laughing)

[AM]:
Well what do you think of the soundtrack? This is something different.

[HP]:
Well listen, the way that came about was that Tim Robbins asked Bruce Springsteen to do a song for the film 'cos Bruce is a friend of his and he seemed like the natural choice.  Then he thought "I know a lot of other musicians so I'll send them a copy of the film and if they are moved, I'll ask them to do a song - from different characters and different perspectives".  He invited Tom Waits, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Michelle Shocked, Lyle Lovett etc.  Tim said one of the biggest thrills of his life was when he got a call from a hero of his, Johnny Cash, saying he wanted to be a part of it and he did a great song In Your Mind.  Anyway that is how the album came about - it's no longer a soundtrack but rather a companion album.

[AM]:
I specifically wanted to ask you about the Suzanne Vega song because that is THE song on the album that is specifically about you.

[HP]:
You know, the first time I heard it I did not like it.  It seemed so harsh.

[AM]:
It's the industrial sound.

[HP]:
That's it, clangs and all that.  But as I listened to it some more I went, "my God, she's got it, she's got that experience".

[AM]:
I've been to a death row, and prisons are not quiet.

[HP]:
There are no soft sounds in prison, nothing is soft.  People, politicians and talk show hosts call them these plush places.  They are not.  No soft experiences either.

[AM]:
It is the song with the fewest words, yet it seems to be pretty evocative.

[HP]:
"I'll see you thru." God she really got this.  "You're new to me, I'm new to you.  I'll see you thru" and "they've come to get your man".  It was so strange to me, the first time I went.  It was terrifying to go into that place of death, you know, mechanised, premeditated death.

[AM]:
How did you react first time?

[HP]:
Terrified.  I was very, very afraid.  My fingertips were cold.  There was an icy band around my stomach and my breathing and heartbeat.  they had locked me into this chamber when they brought out Patrick Sonnier who was the first person I ever visited and I was walking up and down going "Oh my God, I'm in a place of death".  It was very stressful.

[AM]:
Was it different witnessing an injection to an electrocution?

[HP]:
I never witnessed an injection, unless you count seeing Sean Penn get killed all week long during filming.  You now know the terror and the torture of the death penalty, this conscious human being preparing, anticipating and dying a thousand times before they really die.  Does it matter that it is going to be poison that killed you instead of electricity?

[AM]:
On the album you've got an ex-offender who takes a different angle.

[HP]:
Wasn't that a great song by Steve Earle?!  Written from the prison guard's point of view.  "I went to the army to be all I could be / Came back without a clue / Worked on at the prison as I knew I always would / Like my daddy and both my uncles did / Things were going good until they transferred me to Ellis Unit One". (sic)   [Ellis Unit One in Huntsville is the death row for Texas].  And then he mentions dragging prisoners "who couldn't stand" (sic) to the death house, "their mommas crying when that big door slams" (sic) and he brings in the pain and the sorrow of the "victim's family holding hands".  What a song.

[AM]:
I have been in Huntsville, Texas when there has been an execution.  Earle mentions the college kids coming to cheer [there is a university next door to the death house] and "they'd bring their beer an' all", which I actually experienced.

[HP]:
Have you?  Yeah it's really sad, though I think they are more honest in Texas.  They are not embarrassed about what they are doing or why.  They are honest and explicit about the fact that it is purely for revenge.  Other states tend to mask it as if they are not really killing a human being but rather putting him to sleep, which is dangerous because it hides the truth.  It is this euphemism of justice being done.

[AM]:
Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Bruce Springsteen.  Couldn't people accuse you of assembling a bunch bleeding heart liberals?

[HP]:
I don't know that I picked them at all, they just seemed to make their own way towards the film.  But the film is not bleeding heart.  When they show the execution, they simultaneously show the murders, which opens up all the rage all over again.  It is a film full of heart, though, and it leads you to places in your heart that i don't know that people realise that they have.

[AM]:
Now your book has just been reissued over here. [in the UK]  What was the difference between when the book first came out in America and after the film was released?

[HP]:
I could not believe it.  A tidal wave of difference.  The book has been on the New York Times best seller list for weeks.  Before, the cover had a quote from a critic saying "it's the most powerful statement against the death penalty since Albert Camus' 'Reflections on the Guillotine'", and so people would see it and think "ugh, one of those books about capital punishment, I'm not buying that".  The film has "mainstreamed it" so people pick up the book because they're interested in the story that's being told.

[AM]:
Tell us about the St. Thomas Projects.

[HP]:
The story opens here because that's where I got involved with poor and struggling people which is what lead me to death row.  It does not take long for an intelligent person to see that there is a greased track between being poor in Louisiana, and especially being black, and going to prison or death row.

[AM]:
It is pretty dangerous there, right?

[HP]:
It is like a war zone in St. Thomas.  It is typical of an all black project where people are condemned to live because they cannot afford rent elsewhere.  Where people try to raise their children in a decent way.  Where drugs are very open and always have been and the police tolerate it because, as one of them explained to one of the sisters, every city has its problems with drugs and least we know where they are.  In other words, the lives of young black kids on drugs are not a problem to them, because these people are considered disposable.  But let the drugs spill over into one of the "nice neighborhoods" and boy, they'll be on them like gravy on rice, to use a Louisiana expression.  And so it is tolerated, as are killings, poor public [state] schools are accepted because it is where the poor go.

The St. Thomas Housing Project is a place where people have to surmount insurmountable odds to try to lead decent human lives.  If you have a leak in a pipe in the projects, you wait six months to have it fixed, and in every way you are treated with shabbiness and lack of dignity.  People cannot get health care.  If you need open heart surgery you die, because the health care system does not provide for poor people.

[AM]:
You said that drug dealers are the only true equal opportunities employers in America.

[HP]:
Yes, dead right.  A study done a few years ago shows that people with minimum wage jobs who work full time are still at the poverty level, so drugs are a sub-economy.  If people are just out of prison or unemployed and go looking for a decent job, guess where they can get decent pay - the neighborhood drug dealers.

[AM]:
What about people buying themselves out of prison? In your book you said that used to happen.

[HP]:
It still goes on.  I don't quite know how it will work under our new [Louisiana] governor, but it happens.  Basically buying your way out of prison happens because it's about influence and money.  Money and influence decide who is considered for a parole hearing, what their decision is likely to be and what the governor's decision is likely to be.  It is that, not your behavior in prison, that decides your release.

It also has to do with the victim's color.  If you are a person of color and you have killed a white person, you're not going to get out of prison or off death row for any amount of money.

Money also influences who gets to go to prison or death row.  If you can afford a good lawyer, you will not go to prison for so long.  Also, if you are white and kill a black person, you will not go to death row, but if you are black and kill a white, the jury is very likely to sentence you to death.

[AM]:
I met a lady, Martha Anderson Glass, maybe you know her?

[HP]:
Yes, I know Martha.

[AM]:
Now she told me that $25,000 could have got someone she knew who was executed off death row.  Is this true?

[HP]:
Yes, I think that sounds right.  You have to have some of the other combinations, too.  Again, you cannot be a black person who has killed a white person -- the public would not tolerate that.  But yes, this is the way things happen down here.

[AM]:
How is it, knowing that even after things quieten down, thanks to the book, the album, the film (and future video release), and especially now that Susan Sarandon won an Oscar for portraying you, in a certain way you are going to be a celebrity for ever more?

[HP]:
Well... [laughing] all that celebrity means to me is hard work.  No, this celebrity business means more people come to hear me.  I went to give a talk in Memphis, Tennessee last week and normally maybe we would have had a hundred people coming to listen.  Well, we had a thousand people, just because of the film and because they are now familiar with the story, which means that my ability to reach people has been greatly enhanced.

It means that people seek me out for interviews so I can get to tell the story, which is what I have been trying to do for the last twelve years.  I think of it like an amplifier for a song, only now the song is louder and more people can hear it.  Otherwise it just means more work.

[AM]:
What about Pat Buchanan? I don't like what he says, but he articulates his views very intelligently.

[HP]:
He is a sham, but yes he is very clever.  He is saying a lot of the same things that David Duke [a white supremacist who nearly got elected as a Louisiana state representative] was saying.  It's all this meanness, mean spiritedness towards the poor, the immigrants, people of colour.

The fact is that they are never going to be as prosperous economically as we were.  We have some major problems and some major transformations going on with the loss of manufacturing jobs and with the general lack of opportunity.  For the first time ever, people are in the economic crunch where their children will probably do less well than their parents, and so under that stress they are easily subject to manipulation.  Those on welfare, well, the whole welfare and aid to children programs are 1% of the federal US budget, whereas corporations get 12%.  The argument goes that we have to cut down to the bone, that the poor are really the problem eating up those tax dollars.  It's the same mentality that feeds the death penalty.

[AM]:
What about US politicians? I have heard that some of them run around boasting about how many death warrants they have signed, yet they are actually rumoured to be opposed to the death penalty.

[HP]:
Moral weakness and cowardice.  They are afraid to lose votes.

[AM]:
What about the governor of Louisiana, Edwin Edwards? You did not seem to be sure where he stood.

[HP]:
Not at all, I know where he stands.  I know he is absolutely opposed to the death penalty, but he said it is the law and the will of the people and e must uphold it.

He wanted to be Governor of Louisiana more than he wanted anything else.  He pushed aside his moral convictions and one of the side effects was that he had ordered the Board of Pardons & Paroles not to let this issue get near him.  Their marching orders were to simply uphold the death penalty and not give him any cases to consider.  In my book I tell the story of Howard Marsellus, who was chair of the Board.  Later Howard was weeping, saying "I did that.  I was a coward.  I probably even let an innocent man be executed. "

[AM]:
How does it feel as Catholic nun? This must be a strange area for you.

[HP]:
Nuns have begun to get involved in social justice for the past twenty years and so there is nothing incongruous about being involved in social justice and human rights and being a nun.  We left that behind that image of only doing certain things like teaching children and nursing the sick a long time ago.  In fact nuns from all over the country have been writing to me saying at last a film that does not portray us as flying nuns, flaky nuns, or nuns on roller skates, but really shows our lives for what they are.

[AM]:
What is to come of having this film, book, and album?

[HP]:
I hope an awakening of consciousness, which is how things change.  First you have to change people's perception of things and finally, when there is enough consciousness, then people will realise that they are being duped into supporting the death penalty.

[AM]:
Finally, I heard some rumour about Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam's lead singer?

[HP]:
It's true! Eddie is a friend of Tim Robbins, so he asked Eddie if he would do a song for the film.  Eddie said "Man, I'm for the death penalty, that's why I stopped belonging to Amnesty International".  Anyway, Tim persuaded Eddie to see the film and he was completely changed by it.  He jumped in and featured on two songs with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and later did his own song Dead Man Walking.  Unfortunately it was not ready in time for the album, but at his concerts he tells the story and sings his song.

[AM]:
Thanks very much Helen, we seem to have overrun our time.

[HP]:
Yes, everything is so hectic, but we sure covered some ground.


content © Alan Moroney (alanmoroney@interquest.compulink.co.uk)