Dead Man Walking

This was a major Supreme Court case that ruled that the death penalty did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment.” Four years earlier, the Supreme Court had effectively suspended capital punishment in America while states met a threshold of common standards, including no executions for rape. In Gregg, the Court insisted only that the states provide rational guidelines for selecting a death sentence as opposed to life in prison or parole, confirming that rulings could take into account the circumstances of the case and defendant. Louisiana had been one of the states that revised its practices after 1972 to meet a more ‘rational’ federal statement, in their case focusing on the intent to kill. In many cases since, the Court has prohibited certain applications of the death penalty, such as instances where the offender is a minor or has mental disabilities, but the main precedent of Gregg is that it leaves the practices to the states with limited federal purview.

Advocates of capital punishment often cite the Book of Exodus’s injunction of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot…” (21:24-27) as proof of divine support for capital punishment and confirmation that it is the just response to the unlawful taking of a human life. Prejean accepts the idea that the Bible is calling for a proportional punishment and is uninterested in cherry-picking bible verses for competing arguments. In this vein, she points out that the passage is describing a woman who is considered property—an idea that most death-penalty advocates would probably admit is not a practice to be adopted for modern times. This concession enables Prejean to separate the core principles of the Bible from their applicability in modern times and to use the text as a way to improve our lives in the present day, rather than following it blindly or quoting only the passages that endorse someone’s previously held convictions.

This is the religious order of which Helen Prejean is a part. It was founded in 1650 by Jean-Paul Médaille, a Jesuit priest looking to establish a congregation of women; when it was first established, he began with six women. When the French Revolution tried to uproot the Catholic Church for being too closely tied to the monarchy, the order was nearly destroyed but found sanctuary in Lyons. Sisters began migrating to the United States in the mid-19th century, and the order has spread throughout the United States and Canada since its inception. Its presence remains particularly strong in Prejean’s native Louisiana. Although the sisters perform ministry in various areas, their main goal is to bring about a more inclusive society for marginalized people, whether that be those afflicted by poverty, racism, discrimination based on sexual orientation, or environmental degradation. Another prominent member, Carol Anne O’Marie, wrote a famous set of novels featuring a nun named Sister Mary Helen who solved murders.