Death penalty foe outlines her journey

DURHAM -- Sister Helen Prejean said she used to think that being a nun was a matter of loving your neighbor as yourself. As for helping the poor, her typical refrain was, "We're nuns, not social workers."

But when another nun challenged her to see Jesus' message as transforming society and bringing justice to the status quo, she was stirred.

In the 25 years since, Prejean has become not only an activist but also a leader in the movement to abolish the death penalty. Prejean is famous for her defining work that led to a book and the 1995 movie "Dead Man Walking." She addressed about 100 church and community leaders in Durham on Tuesday at First Presbyterian Church.

She told the crowd how a term she once derided -- social justice -- came to define her work, and how a single letter sent to a prison inmate in 1982 developed into a mainstream media event.

A short woman with a folksy Louisiana accent, Prejean described her awakening to the death penalty, which she said is disproportionately administered to black men, often because they have murdered whites.

"We've always been intent to keep black people in check when white people are threatened," Prejean said.

Barring the unlikely intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court, Prejean said only a grass-roots effort on the part of ordinary people who have an awakening like hers will move state legislatures to ban executions.

"It's the commitment of the heart that happens first," Prejean said. "I am going to put my body and my energy and my life into this quest to shut down the killing chambers of North Carolina."

The Supreme Court is expected to rule this spring on a pair of Kentucky lawsuits challenging the three-drug cocktail used in most lethal injections. The combination of drugs is used in North Carolina, which, like most states, has temporarily suspended executions until the court rules.

At issue is whether the drugs constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

But Prejean doesn't think the court will ban the practice. Instead, she looks to states such as New Jersey, which recently abolished the death penalty, and hopes other states follow its lead. Many states might still authorize the practice but cease to carry it out.

Many evangelical Christians support the death penalty and maintain that it is part of a legal system that goes back to the age of the biblical Noah, whose covenant with God included the death penalty.

"I would agree that we should do everything to avoid any decisions about punishment that are wrongly decided," said Daniel Heimbach, a professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest and a death penalty supporter. "But to remove it altogether is to remove retributive justice from the system, which would make it unjust."