17 October 2024 :
October 10, 2024 - Louisiana. At 85, Sister Helen Prejean vows to keep fighting the death penalty. 'I believe it's unjust'
There are 21 states in the U.S. that employ the death penalty. In the view of New Orleanian Sister Helen Prejean, that’s 21 states too many.
A new documentary, “Rebel Nun,” coming to the New Orleans Film Festival, looks at her 40 years of activism as a renowned proponent of abolishing the death penalty.
Prejean originally explored her qualms about state-sponsored executions in her 1993 book, “Dead Man Walking,” which went on to become an award-winning film. Susan Sarandon took home the Oscar for best actress for her portrayal of Prejean.
Those themes of revenge and redemption, along with crime and punishment, struck a chord with many on both sides of the capital punishment debate.
Because he is British, "Rebel Nun" director Dominic Sivyer thought he could look at the issue with a couple of degrees of distance.
“I was determined to make a film that looks at both sides of this issue,” Sivyer said, speaking on Zoom from Marseilles, France, where he’s filming another documentary.
“For instance, I was determined to have Faith Hathaway’s sister in this film and show the effect that the violent rape and murder of her sister had on her. Sister Helen’s support of Faith’s murderer, Robert Lee Willie, who was executed at Angola in 1984, was painful to her, and I understand her anger.”
Sister Helen has been grappling with these issues since 1984, when she was asked as a volunteer at Hope House in New Orleans to become a pen pal to death row inmate Pat Sonnier.
Sonnier and his younger brother Eddie had been convicted of abducting a couple from a lover's lane, then raping the woman and murdering both.
Later, Eddie said that he, not Pat, fired the lethal shots. The state of Louisiana, however, sentenced Eddie to life in prison, and Pat, as the older “influencer,” to death.
Although Prejean fought to have Pat Sonnier's execution commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole, her efforts failed. On April 5, 1984, Prejean was a witness to his execution.
“When I walked out of the execution chamber of Pat Sonnier, where the electrocution happened, it was seared in my brain,” Prejean remembered, sitting in her Bayou St. John residence surrounded by photos of death row inmates whom she's served as spiritual adviser.
“I immediately threw up. I thought to myself that I had a choice. I could walk away from this, or I could stand up as a witness to the brutality of these legally authorized killings.”
As the documentary unfolds, it examines questionable evidence leading to many death penalties.
A case in point is the lethal injection of Dobie Williams, a Black man who was convicted by an all-White Louisiana jury in 1984 of killing a White woman.
Police maintained Williams had confessed, but there was no recording. Williams had an IQ of 65 and was considered intellectually disabled. Prejean, who was his spiritual adviser for more than 10 years, says he was resigned to his fate, but it’s been a controversial case for decades. This, she says, was her 1st personal experience with judicial racism.
The documentary leaves us with the case of Richard Glossip, convicted in Oklahoma in 1998 of murdering the owner of a hotel where he was the manager.
The maintenance man, Justin Sneed, confessed to the murder, saying he had bludgeoned the owner to death with a baseball bat during a robbery.
“However, when police questioned Sneed, they told him they didn’t think he was smart enough to have done this by himself, but if he could come up with the name of someone else involved, they’d ask for life imprisonment for him, rather than the death penalty,” Prejean said.
“That’s when Sneed accused Richard Glossip of being the mastermind behind the crime. Glossip’s lawyers never showed that police video to the jurors.”
'Using every skill I have to end this'
The original conviction was set aside by an Oklahoma court which said his defense was inadequate.
Another jury found him guilty in 2004, but the attorney general of the state of Oklahoma came forward, concluding that Sneed was a liar with psychiatric conditions, and that prosecutors also hid evidence that may have led to an acquittal.
On Oct. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court, in an extraordinary turn of events, heard the case, after delaying Glossip’s ninth execution date in 2023, while the case was on appeal. The new ruling is expected in June 2025.
“What is so shocking about Glossip’s case is that you’ve got important Republicans and Democrats who both feel that he never got a fair trial and have repeatedly questioned his guilt,” director Sivyer said.
Prejean, now 85, vows to fight until she dies.
“I’ll be using every skill I have to end this, because I believe it’s unjust,” Prejean said. “Does the state have the authority to strap people down and kill them? That is the last divine right of kings. Nowhere in America’s Constitution can you own slaves or have the right to kill people.”
“Rebel Nun” is showing at the New Orleans Film Festival at 3:30 p.m. Oct. 20 at the Contemporary Arts Center, 900 Camp St. For information about the film festival, visit neworleansfilmsociety.org.
