Dead Man Walking

The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate

By: Helen Prejean, Desmond Tutu - preface, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins

Narrated by: Helen Prejean

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute—men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing.
Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Here Sister Helen confronts both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the fears of a society shattered by violence and the Christian imperative of love. On its original publication in 1993, Dead Man Walking emerged as an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty. Now, some two decades later, this story—which has inspired a film, a stage play, an opera and a musical album—is more gut-wrenching than ever, stirring deep and life-changing reflection in all who encounter it.

Read by the author, Helen Prejean
Preface written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and read by Dominic Hoffman
Afterwords written and read by Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins

Critic reviews

“Deeply moving . . . Sister Prejean is an excellent writer, direct and honest and unsentimental. . . . She almost palpably extends a hand to her readers.” —The New York Times Book Review

“An immensely moving affirmation of the power of religious vocation. . . . Stunning moral clarity.” —The Washington Post Book World

“Here is one voice for life. We really should need no other.” —The New York Review of Books

"An intimate meditation on crime and punishment, life and death, justice and mercy and—above all—Christian love in its most all-embracing sense. . . . [Prejean] never shrinks from the horror of what she has seen. She never resorts to something so predictable as pathos or a play for sympathy." —Los Angeles Times

"A remarkable writer . . . Prejean's manner of describing the tortured relations among prisoners, criminal-justice officers and victims' families would be the envy of many novelists. Even if your own views on capital punishment are set in concrete, you are sure to be moved by the force of Prejean's personality and commitment." —Glamour

"Painful and powerful . . . [Prejean's] practical moral courage is heroic." —The New Yorker

"Providing a gritty look at what really happens in the final hours of a death row inmate . . . Prejean takes readers to a place most will thankfully never know . . . adeptly probing the morality of a judicial system and a country that kills its citizens." —San Francisco Chronicle

"An impassioned condemnation of capital punishment." —Cleveland Plain Dealer

"This arresting account should do for the debate over capital punishment what the film footage from Selma and Birmingham accomplished for the civil rights movement: turn abstractions into flesh and blood. Tough, fair, bravely alive—you will not come away from this book unshaken."
—BillMcKibben

Poignant Must Read

This epic book is one that should be required reading for all students…. It is so compassionate and honest in its treatment of capital punishment. Bless you, Sr Prejean.

A must read, haunting tale

I saw the movie years ago in the early 2000s when I was in college. I read the book now to revisit the film 20yrs later. Sr. Helen lays out a convincing case of understanding the evil that people do in this world while living up to the maximum of hating sin but loving the sinner. Paul reminds us in Romans 3:23 that we are all sinners; Jesus calls us to forgive one another, "seventy times seven times" (Matt 18:22), and even forgave his executioners while upon the cross (Luke 23:34). Sr. Helen captures our fallen nature, shines a light in the darkness, holds up a mirror, and challenges us to walk down the dark road together. It's a frightfully haunting tale that challenges even our deepest, closely held beliefs about love, hate, justice, forgiveness, and revenge, and holds our feet to the fire on an issue that affects anyone who believes in a democratic, free society. As Dostoyevsky said, “A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.”

Just so human.

Griping. To hear the author narrate this painful yet courageous story is just griping. Of course, the movie was one that is certainly memorable, I don't remember realizing the depth of Sister Prejean's gullibility going in. Her eyes are certainly open by the end? The Death of Innocence? Perhaps autobiographical? Of course, the US justice system has a long way to go before "liberty and justice for all." Alas, it appears to me that we are not ascending to enlightenment, rather, descending in our humanity. Isn't man's inhumanity to man the ultimate pandemic?

An important & beautiful book!

This is just one of those rare, rare books like ‘Silent Spring’ or ‘The Feminine Mystique’ that actually changes the world & galvanizes a generation. Powerful, but also beautifully written. And wonderfully read by Sister Helen.

Highly recommend this. Sr Helen is extraordinary!

I can't imagine a better narrator than Sister Helen. her eyewitness account is humble yet powerful.