Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account Of The Death Penalty In The United States | 
 enlarge | Author: Helen Prejean
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $13.94 (100%)
New (64) Collectible (33) from $2.44
Avg. Customer Rating:  57 reviews
Sales Rank: 48283
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Vintage Books ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0679751319
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.660973
EAN: 9780679751311
ASIN: 0679751319
Publication Date: May 31, 1994
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: With pride from Motor City. All books guaranteed. Best Service, best prices.
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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. At the same time, she came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute him--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. Confronting both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the needs of a crime-ridden society and the Christian imperative of love, Dead Man Walking is an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty, a book that is both enlightening and devastating.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 52 more reviews...
 A MUST READ! September 17, 2008
Dead Man Walking is a work of beauty. This book gives you a clear view of both sides of the death penatly. It is one of the best books I have read in my lifetime. It is heartbreaking as well as inspirational. A must read!
My mind has change June 10, 2008
I remember when a guy in Nebraska went to death roll and was killed. He hurt a bother of a school mate of mine and I could not wait to he died. When he did I felt happy but after reading this book it made me have second thoughts for it was as if I killed that killer for wishing for his death like Helen said "An eye for an eye" now I think to kill another is not the answer and more should be work tore forgiveness. That is what this book will help you to think twice about the death penalty and see life is worth living.
Justice of the Mosaic Law becoming the Catholic Law March 29, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book written by a pseudo-Catholic who allows her readers to believe that justice is "vengeance" or "revenge." It is neither. Justice cannot be evil in its essence, for it would be then universally the same all the time, and evil to everyone. Justice provides one solution for society as a whole, not for individual members in every case. Justice is kind to some parts of society, and necessarily unkind in others. It cannot always be everything to the whole. Even so, blind misunderstanding about Justice prevails and mankind convulses over judges and legislation providing rules regarding crime and punishment. Prejean's nunship does not represent the teaching of true justice under the Catholic banner, particularly. The innocent God-Man, Christ, also died under the death penalty. Christ did not resent nor teach that the death penalty was unjust. It was the law of the land. It was the Mosaic Law becoming the Catholic Law.
Nowhere does "sister" Prejean write the truth that Christ went willingly to His Passion and Death. Those who abandon the teachings of God commit crime also--not such a visible crime as murder, but a worse offense to God. It is not only the murderer who must be forgiven for his crimes against God's teaching, but those who teach falsehoods, such as Prejean. Prejean calls "admitting the murder" is "taking reponsibility," vaguely insinuating that a murderer thus fulfills his debt to God, but in reality, he has only "taken responsibility," only a first step, perhaps because he got caught. Only God knows if the penitent sought God's Mercy --and not man's-- for the murderer gives no sign. Nor does Prejean offer it.
Had the murderer been taught he must not only "take responsibility" but must [formally] confess to God [not to mankind] that his sorrow is true, [in the presence of one of Christ's officers of the Divine Court, a Confessor, i.e., a priest] then the families would have been comforted at the last. The duties of Prejean are unfinished, for herself and for the murderer; but they are far more than Prejean knows about, for she only teaches secularly that "responsibility" replaces repentance for breaking God's law. Responsible formal and private confession remains the vehicle for forgiveness from God (public confession only expresses charity to the families.)
The movie misleads all of society, both weak Catholics and unknowledgeable others that such admission is a "replacement for auricular confession." Pseudo-catholics do not know better, but ought to. They think secular confession (to mankind) is the new commandment of God. But it cannot be avoided --in the original (scripture) that Christ spoke what He taught, "Whosoever's sins ye shall forgive--they are forgiven them." Sinner speaks to Confessor. Auricular. Prejean feels better, thinks she has it right, but she was taught wrong. She passes her error onto society in its worst form, Naturalism. Unless the murderer seeks supernatural (Divine) Mercy and forgiveness, "I am sorry because I have first of all offended God, and secondly because I have offended Thy creatures, society," all the secular, or natural, justice on this earth will not help the murderer save his soul. The Prejean does not teach. The act of official confessing and absolving (by a priest) is absent and it is not implied.
Don't be fooled by secular catholicism. It is not Supernatural Catholicism. Prejean teaches a corporal work of mercy--to Visit the Prisoner, and substitutes a Beatitude, Clean of Heart (or "responsibility") for Confessing to God for an offense. What does the world learn?--to visit prisoners, to give up executing them (they never use "execute" in the movie--only "kill"). So prisoners never hear about repentance and confession. Viewers only observe that murderers squirm in their error and guilt in this world, never confess or obtain repentance, and never learn they, sinners too, must forgive someone who repents, as God does.
Things appear right in Prejean's world as she attempts to teach Naturalism and secular good works. Had she said to the murderer, "I, and all of us, need forgiveness, too, albeit not for murder," perhaps the murderer would have silently asked for grace to convert. Then the world could have known what the message is. It is not to abandon the death penalty--but to convert sinners, the real teaching of Christ, the purpose of His Sacrifice of His Life. As it is, the world, the story, and Prejean, all fail in justice and truth.
The "new nuns" such as Prejean substitute temporal (earthly) forgiveness and Naturalism. They give up Theism and Supernaturalism and souls languish with a loss of truth. There is a direct help (grace) from sacramental (supernatural) confession which alleviates all of mankind, but Prejean teaches that "supernatural forgiveness" is achieved by temporal means. She is subtly claiming that her corporal works of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, spiritual works of mercy, and suffering life's ills on behalf of the murderer are substitutes for his own such corporal works and that his mere "taking responsibility" becomes sufficient for absolving one from the mortal sins a sinner commits. Her chief example of such forgiveness comes by way of the use of "responsibility." This is a nebulous word which can stop along the way of "Okay, I did it--but I would do it again," or any other version of that admission. If anyone thinks that such a "responsibility" admission satisfies them, then they must also admit that it hardly satisfies God for His Good, His Mercy, His Love. Prejean's good intentions could actually condemn the prisoner to Hell for all eternity by omission. Is it worse to lose one's soul or one's body? The latter all will lose.
These corporal works are not salvific nor meritorious for anything more than natural grace (natural good) such as establishing hospitals or feeding one's neighbor. One receives supernatural grace, the kind that is meritorious for soul-saving (salvation) only when one performs these good works for God first--because God says so-- and THEN for man.
What people have difficulty to understand is that the unrepented crime is an offense against God, a blasphemy against Him, a sacrilege against His Word, whether it be disbelief in His Word, or a commission of harm to neighbor, both offenses and crimes, the latter a crime against God's creature, the former a crime far worse, directly an offense to God. We observe some criminals in their sorrow and remorse, and some who reach full contrition for God's sake, but we see victims and others who refuse God His First Command, "If you worship Me Alone, you will not disobey My commands."
The Mosaic Law from the Roman Catholic Missal; 1937, St. Andrew Abbey:
I am the Lord, thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt not have strange gods before Me. Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing thatis in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them.
Inspiring book & Film March 31, 2007
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is both a book and a movie that you need to interact with. Particularly in a day and age when there is a movement here in Canada to try to bring the death penalty back. The book is much more in depth than the movie. The book profiles the first three men that Sr. Prejean goes to the death chamber with as Spiritual Director. It profiles her mistakes as she journeys down this path for the first few times. She witnessed her first execution on April 5th, 1984 and she has been advocating against the death penalty since then.
The book does a great job of showing the disparity in how the death penalty is applied. It goes through the studies on its lack of effectiveness, and how for the most part, it is the poor and the African-American who are on death row. Even if you only read the appendices, the book will challenge you to view the death penalty in a different way.
The movie was the inspiration and starred Susan Sarandon. Sarandon was given the book while on a personal retreat at a monastery; she came home and gave the book to her partner, Tim Robbins, who directed the film. Together they approached Sr. Prejean, who went out and rented Bull Durham. She was a little leery of having them do the film, but after meeting with them went ahead with the project.
The film co-stars Sean Penn as Matthew Poncelet, a compilation of the 3 men in the book. The movie, while slow moving, is incredibly intense and draws you into the drama of waiting for a death when you know the date and time of that approaching death.
As an interesting aside, another good book is Forgiving the Dead Man Walking by Debbie Morris, who was one of the victims of Robert Lee Willie from the book. Debbie always said if they ever made a movie, Penn would have to play Willie because they looked so much alike.
So read the book and watch the movie, and if you want yet another challenging book, give Forgiving the Dead Man Walking a read also.
A powerful indictment of the death penalty in America April 9, 2006
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
This book, written by a Catholic nun, is a powerful indictment of the death penalty in America. She describes in vivid detail her role as "spiritual adviser" to two death row inmates, and in graphic detail, describes their deaths at the hands of the state.
While steadfastly anti-capital punishment (how can we trust a government that screws up so much in other areas in the application of this ultimate punishment?), Sister Prejan does not shy away from discussing her views with the families of the victims, and does not shy away from presenting the families' views to the reader with dignity and respect. She describes how she goes on to form both an abolitionist and victims' rights group in Louisana. She also goes on to point out how much more costly it is to execute someone than to put them in jail for life with no possibility of parole.
It's difficult to imagine how one could expect forgiveness for people who have brutally murdered people. Sister Prejan does not lecture, it seems even she does not expect this to be possible for most. She does, however, put the thought in the reader's mind - how can one advocate abandoning our humanity to fall to the level of the killer, while at the same time showing their humanity back to us. Sad and disturbing, but one of the most important works on the subject ever published. Strongly recommended.
|
|
|
