SISTER HELEN PREJEAN is probably not the archetype that comes to mind when you think of a nun, yet she is probably the country’s best-known living Catholic layperson, famous for her anti–death penalty activism.
In the early 1980s, Prejean met a prisoner on death row—Elmo Patrick Sonnier—after an activist asked her to write him a letter. It was a life-altering experience. She served as Sonnier’s spiritual adviser and accompanied him to his death, which inspired her work against capital punishment. This story was immortalized in her 1993 book, Dead Man Walking, which in turn inspired a movie starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Prejean. Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s opera of the same name premiered in 2000 and opened the New York City Metropolitan Opera’s 2023 season for its first performance there. Prejean, who is now 85, is also the author of The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions (2004) and River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey (2019).
In October, Prejean spoke with Reason’s Billy Binion about her opposition to the death penalty, how she connects with crime victims, her response to Christians who believe the death penalty is just, and her attempts to reach across the political aisle.
Reason: In 1984, you were in the Louisiana death house waiting to witness your first execution. A guard asked, “What’s a nun doing in a place like this?” Forty years later, how would you answer that question?
Prejean: There was the theory of what the death penalty is supposed to be. And then I watch this human being I had known for two and a half years, strapped into a wooden oak chair and electrocuted to death, and it was called justice. And it seared my soul. Then I began to learn about how it works. What are we
