Review: Dead Man Walking : An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States

Dead Man Walking : An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States by Helen Prejean
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sister Prejean if somewhat reluctably, was part of the 60s and 70s Catholic singing nun and social justice outreach approaches

I came to St. Thomas as part of a reform movement in the Catholic Church, seeking to harness religious faith to social justice. In 1971, the worldwide synod of bishops had declared justice a "constitutive" part of the Christian gospel. When you dig way back into Church teachings, you find that this focus on justice has been tucked in there all along in "social encyclicals." Not exactly coffee- table literature. The documents have been called the best-kept secret of the Catholic Church. And with good reason. The mandate to practice social justice is unsettling because taking on the struggles of the poor invariably means challenging the wealthy and those who serve their interests. "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" - that's what Dorothy Day, a Catholic social activist said is the heart of the Christian gospel.

Sister Helen Prejean (@helenprejean)
This gives Millard a chance to give a brief history of the kind of legal representation Pat has had and how, if he and his team had taken his case from the beginning, this man would never have gone to death row. Marsellus nods.
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online: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...

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Fighting patriarchy:

[Bill Quigley] tells me that prisoners have a constitutional right to the spiritual adviser of their choice. It's a good thing to know, because it soon becomes evident that the prison wants to block women from serving as spiritual advisers to death-row inmates. Sister Lilianne Flavin, my friend and coworker, has recently been denied her request to counsel a death-row inmate. I find out that the two Catholic priest chaplains at Angola are the ones seeking to block me and other women from death-row prisoners. One of them has reportedly said that I was so "naive" and "emotionally involved" with Sonnier that I was "blind" to the fact that Pat may have "lost his soul" because he had not received the last rites of the Church during the final hours of his life. Women, they are saying, are just too "emotional" to relate to death-row inmates.

Scam

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He then explains to me the workings of the bribes-for-pardons scheme that went on until the time of his arrest.

He says that when the Pardon Board met, there would usually be several applicants' files marked "Expedite," which meant a "deal" had been cut. The payments varied, Howard Marsellus says, - "sometimes a few thousand, sometimes way up at $100,000 or more."

I ask who got the money, and Marsellus says, "Lawyers, state legislators. You figure it out. Only the governor can grant a pardon. Who do you think got the money?"

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/09/...

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