The Importance of Being Present in the Last Moments of a Person's Life

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"It's very very intensive to accompany a person who's all alone it's had this huge injustice done to them or in a position where the state is really serious about killing them how do you offer comfort?" she said. "I played a little part and helping the Catholic Church developed on this issue that we cannot ever give over to states the right to take life"

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean was invited to write a letter to a man on death row in Louisiana’s Angola State Prison named Elmo Patrick Sonnier. She told us, “I thought that all I was going to be doing was writing letters. And lo and behold, two years later, I am in that execution chamber.” She’s now 81, and has been present at the executions of six men.

Sister Helen’s book, Dead Man Walking, is about her time as a spiritual advisor to Elmo Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie. It was adapted into a movie starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

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