Sr. Helen Prejean papers

Sr. Helen Prejean was born on April 21, 1939, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille in 1957 (now known as the Congregation of St. Joseph) and received a B.A. in English and Education from St. Mary's Dominican College, New Orleans in 1962. In 1973, she earned an M.A. in Religious Education from St. Paul's University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She has been the Religious Education Director at St. Frances Cabrini Parish in New Orleans, the Formation Director for her religious community, and has taught junior and senior high school students. Sr. Helen began her prison ministry in 1981 when she dedicated her life to the poor of New Orleans. While living in the St. Thomas housing project, she became pen pals with Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers, sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana's Angola State Prison. She started to visit Sonnier and maintained regular correspondence with him. When Sonnier was executed in 1984, Sr. Helen witnessed his execution as his spiritual advisor, and has been campaigning against the death penalty ever since. At the request of Millard Farmer, an attorney who had become involved with the final stages of Sonnier’s appeals, Sr. Helen started to visit Robert Lee Willie, another death row inmate at Angola, late in 1984. Willie was in the final stages of his appeals, and was executed at the end of December 1984. Once again, Sr. Helen attended his execution. She then became spiritual advisor to Willie Celestine, who was executed in 1987. Her experiences with both the condemned prisoners and the families of the murdered victims led Sr. Helen to advocate for both groups. She started the support group “Survive” in New Orleans for families of murder victims. She also became involved with Pilgrimage for Life (later the Louisiana Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty). By 1990, Sr. Helen was working on turning her experiences into a book chronicling her experiences with Pat Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie. Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States was published in 1993 and became a national, and then international, bestseller. In 1994, Sr. Helen was approached by Susan Sarandon with a view to turning her book into a movie. With Tim Robbins as writer and director, Dead Man Walking was shot in 1995 and released at the end of December of that year. In 1996, Susan Sarandon won the Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of the Sr. Helen character in the movie. Dead Man Walking was also developed into an opera in 2000, of which new productions are still being staged. In 2003, Tim Robbins rewrote his screenplay into a play for use with the Dead Man Walking Play Project in schools and colleges, which is an ongoing project. Sr. Helen’s second book was published in 2004. The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions describes in detail the cases of Dobie Gillis Williams and Joseph O’Dell, both of whom Sr. Helen accompanied to execution, and both of whom she believed to be innocent. In the book she talks about their cases and the many flaws in the death penalty system. Sr. Helen continues to speak and campaign widely for the abolition of the death penalty, and to support death row inmates as a spiritual advisor.