6:50 p.m.

Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, will begin speaking about the issue of the death penalty in the Hixon Leid auditorium in the Harper Center at 7 p.m. She is an international advocate for abolishing the death penalty, which is still legal in Nebraska.

Prejean began prison ministry in 1981 while working with the poor in New Orleans. 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. He became the subject of her best-seller “Dead Man Walking,” which was nominated for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize.

To learn more about Prejean go to http://www.prejean.org/

To learn more about the efforts to abolish the death penalty in Nebraska go to http://www.nadp.net/

7:05 p.m.

Over 400 people took their seats in the near-capacity filled auditorium waiting for Prejean to begin speaking. She spoke at Creighton Preparatory High School.

Dept. of Sociology, CCSJ, Law School, Nebraskans Innocence Project and Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty and the Cortina Community came together to bring Prejean to campus.

Two bills are faced Nebraska legislature last year after the use of the electric chair was deemed “cruel and unusual punishment” two years ago. The bill to abolish the death penalty last year was voted down while the bill to implement lethal injection was passed and awaits general debate.

Prejean has accompanied six men to their deaths and said some were innocent. She is working on her third book.

7:10 p.m.

Prejean took the stage, opening with, “Great to be here, but it is COLD.” and cheering on her New Orlean’s Saints Super Bowl victory.

7:13 p.m.

Prejean said most people say, “If you want equal justince, you kill, you die.” she disagreed that an eye for an eye philosophy is too simple for the world we live in.

While our justice system believes that watching a murder die can bring closure to the victim’s family, it leaves more sadness than there was before.

“That is the United States of of America and our beliefs about dealing with violent crime,” she said.

7:15

“Almost all of us in here come from the privileged and we can articulate,” she said. “Because I am educated, I could write a book, I can stand in front of you and tell a story or articulate what I think. But when people are poor or are uneducated or don’t have health care then they die early deaths.”

While Prejean was starting out with her religious order, she never felt the urge to help the poor in New Orleans because, “The Bible said the poor would always be with us.”

Then, she said, there was “the waking up” in her life.

“It was because I was involved in a congregation of women I woke up and we debated our role as religious women with the poor and I was against it at first.”

She said she didn’t know what social justice was about. She resisted social justice. She said she was agitated by the issue “like a Whirlpool washing machine.” She was afraid of the poor at first.

“I was on the total wrong side of social justice,” she said.

Because she was agitated by the issue, that meant God was at work in her life.

7:21

“In this country if you are still poor, then there’s got to be lazy and love welfare checks,” Prejean said.

Because she was born into a privileged people, she never knew poor people growing up. She never knew African Americans, either.

“I remember going to church as a child and the black kids had to sit on the right side of the church, they had to receive communion separate from us, and I never questioned it,” she said.

Race has everything to with how the death penalty is applied, Prejean said. The 10 states with 80 percent of death row inmates, it was southern slave states from the Civil War.

On top of that, those who receive the death penalty are minorities murdering whites, rather than black-on-black crime which is more prevalent.

7:27 p.m.

When the Supreme Court established the death penalty it was supposed to be reserved for “the worst of the worst.”

“What exactly is the worst of the worst? If my mother was killed that would be the worst for me, but that isn’t good enough for the justice system,” she said.

Worst of the worst, according to Prejean, refers to minorities killing white people. She cited one case of a 14-year old girl who was raped and murdered in Louisiana by three men.

“Surely that is the worst of the worst,” she said.

No. Because the girl was black and her murderers were white, none were given the death penalty and more than one are out of prison today.

7:33

Prejean said her first awakening in life was joining the novitiate, but the second was moving with the poor black residents of New Orleans.

“My awakening was sitting at their feet and seeing what life is really like,” she said.

While she used to be one of the people who blamed the poor for being poor, she quickly learned that it was the system the kept people poor.

“Suffering was the source of the passion,” she said.

Watching children as innocent kids and seeing them again at 13 being influenced by drug dealers changed her life.

Soon after working with the poor, she was asked to write a letter to someone on death row. She never assumed that would shape her life.

“There should be a theology course on The Sneakiness of God Part One, Part Two and Part Three,” she said.

That man was Patrick Sonnier and he soon wrote back. Letter after letter that man wrote back to her and she realized he had no one to visit him because of Matthew 25, “When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”

7:40 p.m.

Her life as a advocate for the abolition of the death penalty was not a spark, she said.

“It was like a boat put on the water and taken in a slow current,” she said.

She looked into his eyes on her first visit and “I was shocked because I couldn’t believe how human his face was.”

His first words to her were of thanks. She said so many people say they would visit and never could.

She looked into his file and saw the photos of the two teenagers he and his brother murdered. She saw their prom photos and photos of them living a regular teenage life. Then she saw the names of those found guilty for the murder and she felt guilty for standing with the murderers.

After the final hearing she met the families of the victims. The father of the son who was killed is the true hero of “Dead Man Walking,” Prejean said.

She said he wanted to be there to watch Sonnier die and wanted to hate the murderers, but could not. She prayed with him one morning and learned his opposition to the death penalty.

“He was my first teacher. He said, ‘I’m going to do what Jesus told me to do and forgive,'” Prejean said.

She was with Sonnier for the last three days of life and looked into his eyes as he died. She simply didn’t understand.

“There is a belief that violence is redemptive and violence can only be solved by violence,” she said.

8:00 p.m.

Two people stood in the audience, both on death row for 19 years, pointed out by Prejean. They are but two of 139 people found innocent after living nearly two decades facing death.

8:05 p.m.

Prejean had the opportunity to be part of the dialogue with Pope John Paul XXII in the 1997. That was the year the pope changed the catechism of the death penalty.

“When you have a chance to talk to the pope, you talk straight. I had 10 years of experience walking people down death row,” she said.

While she spoke with the pope, he said death penalty was immoral unless it was “an absolute necessity.”

“When I heard that my stomach dropped… it’s not up to the government to decide what an absolute necessity is. Death has to be taken off the table.”

“I told him his words were going to be quoted for death,” she said. “Does the church only uphold the dignity of innocent life?”

Soon after the pope changed his mind and opposed the death penalty to absolution.

8:15 p.m.

Prejean invited the audience to get involved with the issue of the death penalty.

“I ask you to dig into it,” Prejean said. “Make it part of your prayer, your intellectual evolution and I invite you to make the journey with me. Enter into it. If you can tackle this one, it gives you a key to almost all the other social issues in this country.”

“Violence is never the ultimate solution,” she said.

8:20 p.m.

The floor was opened up to questions. One Catholic asked why he never hears issues like this mentioned in his church.

She asked if any kind of justice issue is part of Mass at his church. When he shook his head, she challenged him by saying, “There is only one way to change that sir.”

One woman asked about the “redemptive power of violence.” That idea only came about after 1,000 years of Christianity and before that, violence was not supposed to breed more violence.

Prejean took this opportunity to talk specifically to Creighton students. She said people all read the Bible differently, but college is the time for all students to read the Bible and learn who Jesus really was and how He can influence lives.

“If you think you can’t really and the death penalty, that is because you have never been part of action. Take the first step,” Prejan ended.