Dead Man Walking: An eyewitness account of the death penalty by Sister Helen Prejean

This book is a phenomenal look at the problems of capital punishment in the USA. It is written by a nun and centres around visits she had with two prisoners, both on death row. The basis of Prejean's argument is that capital punishment is extremely harsh and that such a punishment should not be inflicted at all if it cannot be inflicted fairly, which obviously it hasn't been.

Prejean met Pat Sonnier when he was on death row for brutally killing two teenagers. She first began writing to him as she felt that she needed to be doing more for impoverished people as a nun and as a Christian. We hear chilling accounts of the death penalty and its trials and tribulations over the last century. Prisoners who required five currents of electricity to die over a period of over quarter of an hour; incidents of prisoners catching fire in the process; and one failed attempt for a prisoner to be killed by the jolts. We learn that not only is the electric chair an instrument that does not always do its job properly, but that its infliction is often intensely painful.

As Prejean continues her story of visiting Sonnier and sitting through his many appeals up until his death, she continues relating the inconsistencies of the death penalty including differential sentencing procedures based on race, wealth and a multitude of other variables. She also includes statistics from other countries who use the death penalty, which show a high number of juvenile executions (i.e. infliction of the death penalty on someone under 18 years of age) and the death penalty disproportionately being handed to those who society find it most easy to tread on: the powerless. Despite the US Supreme Court's finding that the death penalty was unlawful, many states have overruled this and continue to use it. Although this book is now fairly dated, the statistics remain similar. Amnesty International's website shows that in the USA, the race of the victim is the most reliable predictor of whether or not the death penalty will be received. More recently, an astonishing 1/3 of inmates would have received a life sentence rather than the death penalty if their victim had been white. Furthermore, it is estimated that 5-10% of people on death row have serious mental illness, despite international laws which prohibit the exercise of the death penalty on these people.

Prejean gives us an astonishing look at how much all these variables come into play as she meets a second death row inmate, Robert Willie. She faces more adversity this time and has trouble even entering the prison, despite a guarantee to an inmate of a spiritual adviser if he/she chooses. It is at this point in the book where Prejean also begins to take the families of the victims more into account, after the families of Sonnier's victims expressed upset at being ignored. This leads Prejean to join a victims' rights group and it is here that the political message she is trying to get across becomes clear.

This is a brilliantly written book. It gives an astonishing account of life on death row and provides statistics and information on the practice of capital punishment in the USA. I would recommend it to all.