January  11, 2008

Death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean to present “Dead Man Walking – the Journey Continues”

Rock Island, Ill. - Renowned death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean will speak later this month at Augustana College. Prejean, who rose to national prominence following the publication of her best-selling book, Dead Man Walking, will present "Dead Man Walking - the Journey Continues" at 7 p.m. Wednesday, January 23, in Augustana's Wallenberg Hall (inside Denkmann Memorial Hall, 3520 7th Ave.) With funding from the Augustana College Office of Campus Ministries, the event is open to the public, free of charge.

Sister Marilyn Ring, associate chaplain, has coordinated Prejean's visit to Augustana, which will also include a Community Convocation address at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, January 24, in Centennial Hall (3703 7th Ave.). "I'm looking forward to hearing Helen Prejean share her personal experience with the healing power of forgiveness," said Ring. "She will challenge us to broaden our appreciation and respect for human life and her presence will be a huge incentive and inspiration for us to work on behalf of the Moratorium Campaign against the death penalty."

Prejean, a native of Louisiana, has been instrumental in sparking national dialogue on the death penalty. A member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, Prejean spent her first 24 years with the Sisters teaching religion to junior high school students and working within her community, first as religious education director and then as faith formation director. She later moved into the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans and began working at Hope House, a center that assists public housing residents. It was during this time that she was asked to correspond with a death row inmate and in 1982 started visiting Patrick Sonnier in Louisiana's Angola Prison. She became his spiritual adviser, worked to prevent his execution, and finally walked with him to the electric chair. She did the same thing with a second prisoner, Robert Willie.

She wrote of her experiences in Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States, published by Random House in 1993. The book became a best seller, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and spawned an Oscar-winning movie and an internationally-acclaimed opera. Now Tim Robbins has made it into a play that is being performed by high school and college students across the country.

Since 1984, Sister Helen has divided her time between campaigning against the death penalty and counseling individual prisoners on death row. She has accompanied four more men to their deaths. In doing so, she began to suspect that some of those executed were not guilty. This realization inspired her second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, released by Random House in December of 2004.

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Note: Sister Helen Prejean can be reached for advance interviews at (504) 948-6557.

Kirby Winn
Director of Public Relations
Office: (309) 794-7473 Mobile: (309) 912-1532 Fax: (309) 794-3461
publicrelations@augustana.edu