Part of the Executing Justice: America and the Death Penalty Lecture and Event Series Friday, May 16 / 8 P.M. / General public $10 and UCSB students $8 UCSB Campbell Hall Tickets available in advance and at the door beginning at 7:00 P.M. from UCSB Arts & Lectures Ticket Office: 893-3535 Sister Helen's opposition to the death penalty and her advocacy on behalf of the condemned grew out of her encounters with Louisiana death row inmate Pat Sonnier, and her role as his spiritual advisor. Her talk in Campbell Hall takes up the story of her ministry and her work as an abolitionist in the years following Sonnier's execution. Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean’s 1993 chronicle of the Louisiana execution process, not only was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, but was also adapted into an opera and a hit film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. A tireless fighter against capital punishment, Sister Prejean has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, copies of Dead Man Walking will be available for purchase and signing. Sister Helen Prejean, C.S.J. is the author of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the U.S. (1993), which was on the New York Times best seller list for 31 weeks and which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The book was made into a motion picture written and directed by Tim Robbins and for which Susan Sarandon received the best actress award in 1996 at the Academy Awards for her portrayal of Sister Helen. Dead Man Walking has been translated into 12 languages and has been made into an opera by the San Francisco Opera Company with Terrance McNally as librettist and Jake Heggie, composer. The world premiere of the opera was performed in San Francisco in October, 2000. Sister Helen was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, as well as in 1998, 1999, and 2000. She has received many awards including the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame University, the Champion of Liberty Award from the U.S. Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Sanctity of Life Award from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She has received 25 honorary degrees and has been featured in many newspapers such as the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Atlanta Constitution, and on television, including features on ABC’s "Prime Time Live," "Frontline" on PBS, and on the BBC’s "Everyman." Sister Helen is the honorary chairperson of The Moratorium Campaign, a group gathering signatures for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty, and of Hands Off Cain, an international group based in Rome working for abolition of the death penalty. She is a member of Amnesty International and the U.S. Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Sister Helen joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille in 1957, and received her B.A. in English from St. Mary’s Dominican College in New Orleans in 1962 and her M.A. in Religious Education from St. Paul’s University in Ottawa, Canada in 1973. In 1981 Sister Helen worked at the St. Thomas Housing Project with poor inner city residents and began counseling death row inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary; she continues this ministry today. Sister Helen has accompanied five men to their death by execution. The names and dates of those executed are Elmo Patrick Sonnier (electric chair) Louisiana 1984; Robert Lee Willie (electric chair) Louisiana 1984; Willie Celestine (electric chair) Louisiana 1987; Joseph O’Dell III (lethal injection) Virginia 1997; Dobie Gillis Williams (lethal injection) Louisiana 1999. Sister Helen also works with murder victims’ families and founded a group in New Orleans called Survive. She is also an honorary member of Murder Victims for Reconciliation. Sister Helen has lived and worked in Louisiana all her life. She has taught junior and senior high school students, has been Religious Education Director of St. Francis Cabrini Catholic Parish in New Orleans, and has been Formation Director for her community. Sister Helen is currently working on a book for Random House Publishers on three possibly innocent men on death row called Innocence Betrayed. Presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Law and Society Program, with support from the and Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life and the Critical Issues in America Program as part of Executing Justice: America and the Death Penalty. Top of Page <<Back