Sister Helen Prejean's account of the executions of two different deathrow murderers is intensified by the weeks she spent as a "spiritual adviser" to each man before his death. The convictions themselves were sometimes discussed, but how to prepare for a death penalty became more important. Sister Helen's position that capital punishment is never justified, for any crime, only haunted her more while befriending two men who would soon experience it.

The first deathrow inmate Sister Helen saw was Elmo Patrick Sonnier who had been found guilty of shooting a young girl and her boyfriend, after raping the girl. Although Patrick's brother later confessed to the shooting, Patrick himself was put to death for it in 1984 in the Louisiana State Penitentiary.

The second inmate she visited was Robert Lee Willie. He and a friend had picked up a girl one night, raped her and then stabbed her to death. He was executed later the same year.

Sister Helen learned quickly that many victim families hated her because of her opposition to capital punishment. She was nick-named "Sob Sister" because she showed sympathy for the murderers. But to her they were only..."little boys inside big men's bodies, little boys who never had much chance to grow up." But this meant nothing to the victim families, who gladly watched the executions of the murderers.

Yet there were two other realities Sister Helen had to face: the prison officials weren't too keen on executions, while at the same time, legal and government officials often supported them for political reasons. They respected the electric chair as a "noble" vengeance, an act of "dignity", and a "humane" punishment.

Actually, religion doesn't play a major role in Sister Helen's undertakings, and besides her references to scriptures and God amd Jesus, she also reveres Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. She often refers to Amnesty International, and the Mennonite church which created a "Survivor" group for the victims of violent crimes. She and other Catholic nuns helped organize "Pilgrimage", a group in Louisiana working for abolition of the death penalty.

Sister Helen Prejean's unusual experiences with those people directly involved in the death penalty openly expose many truths which most of us don't know, or don't want to know.

DEAD MAN WALKING was originally published in 1993 and was later made into a major motion picture. Recently, the San Francisco Opera commissioned composer Jake Heggie and playwright Terrance McNally to produce an opera based by Prejean's book. The opera, which was premiered by the San Francisco Opera in the fall of 2000, received critical acclaim.