Helen Prejean and the Death Penalty

The University of St. Thomas Law School community was today treated to a talk by Sr. Helen Prejean, of Dean Man Walking fame, who has spent the last 20 years walking with people on death row, and who gives about 140 talks a years around the country in an effort to foster public discussion of the death penalty.

S. Helen started by stressing the need to go beyond theoretical discussions of the death penalty and focus on the practicalties of how it is administered. What does it say, she wonders, that in 8 out of 10 cases where the death penalty is the punishment, the victims of the crimes in question are white? Or what does it say that 10 states in the South account for 80% of U.S. executions. (Texas alone accounts for about 40%.)  Or that those sentenced to the death penalty are most likely poor?  She also taked about innocent defendants, the subject of her new book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions.  She laments, in this context, how difficult it is for particularly the poor to mount an effective defense and how difficult it is to succeed in a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. None of these arguments are new, but that does not make them any less compelling. 

Ultimately, however, she argues that death as a punishment is inconsistent with the dignity of the human person and criticizes politicians and others who push us to believe that the only way to honor the family of victims of heinous crimes is by killingl the perpetrator.  She also suggests that in accepting the death penalty we not only harm the dignity of the defendant, but that we demean ourselves as well when we accept that the intentional killingn of another human being is not an act of cruelty.  She also talks in her book about "the corrosive effects on the souls of those who carry out the killings."

Rick asks whether there is a death penalty moratorium in effect.  If there is not, there should be.