American letter | The Fire by Helen Prejean

(New Orleans) The apartment door opens energetically. A little smiling woman appears.

“Ah, it’s a visit to Montreal! Welcome to New Orleans! »

The conversation starts before we even take a seat in Helen Prejean’s small living room, at once an office, a disorderly library and a prayer corner.

She is reading No Country For Old Menby Cormac McCarthy, not exactly a pious read.

“We are in a very difficult situation at the moment, Yves. It’s like the end of a war. There are fewer deaths, but the people who die are just as dead,” the woman everyone calls “Sister Prejean” told me.

The Catholic nun from the Institute of the Sisters of Saint Joseph gained international fame after the publication of Dead Man Walkingin 1993, which became a film in 1995, then an opera in 2000.

She recounts her awakening to social injustices and her first contact with Patrick Sonnier, sentenced to death for having raped and killed a young couple. She accompanied him until his execution in 1984.

At 85, she is still at the height of the fight to abolish the death penalty in the United States. The rebellious sistera documentary dedicated to him, will be launched in two weeks in New Orleans.

“I prefer “revolutionary”. “Rebel”, it gives the impression that we are content to oppose”, says the one who has had some skirmishes with the local conservative Catholic hierarchy, pro-life in the hospital, pro-death penalty at court.

She tells me about the case of Richard Glossip, who will be before the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Convicted in 2004 for a murder in Oklahoma, his case was reviewed by two investigations concluding serious injustices invalidating the verdict. Republican elected officials in favor of the death penalty in this conservative state are pleading for his release, as is the attorney general. But the man is still on death row. The governor does not have the power to commute his sentence, only to push it back 60 days in 60 days.

What occupies him these days is the case of the Salvadoran Manuel Ortiz, convicted in 1994 for having ordered the murder of his wife in order to receive insurance.

The prosecutor in the case told the jury to send a message “to these Latinos who come to marry our women to return to live in El Salvador like kings.” The same prosecutor, who had hidden important evidence, later represented the family in a private lawsuit against the insurance firm.

Again on February 28, she accompanied an eighth person during his execution, this time in Texas. The last words of David Cantu, convicted in 2000 for the murder of his cousin and his fiancée, were to affirm his innocence to the victims’ families. Spiritual advisors can now be present in the killing chamber, not just witnesses behind glass. Helen Prejean held his hand during the injection which led to his death within 21 minutes.

“He’s strapped to the stretcher. I whisper in his ear.

— What do you say?

— You are a child of God, you are innocent, I will tell your story, your death can help others obtain redemption.

— What if the person is guilty?

— I say: You are a child of God. Every person is better than the worst thing they have done. That’s not all there is in you.

—Aren’t there people who are irredeemable?

—Who will judge?

— How do you come out of these experiences?

— I then become a witness. This reignites the fire in me and my mission is renewed. I must act! »

Nothing seemed destined for this religious teacher from a Cajun family in Baton Rouge to become the national figure of abolitionism.

“I was born during the Jim Crow era [les lois ségrégationnistes du Sud]. My parents grew up and they were poor, but they were white. My father was able to get an education and became a successful lawyer. We lived in a large house with quarters for black servants behind it. Helen looked after the house, Jessy looked after the grounds. My parents were nice to them. My father even helped them buy a house and find a good job. But Jim Crow was never questioned. This is how a culture puts blinders on you. “Honey, it’s better for the races if they are separate…” Sometimes, in the rare conversations on the subject, this was said. Or: “People argue when races are mixed. They like to be with each other.” Those kinds of things privileged white people said to each other. »

Then, in 1981, after living in a community in a clean white suburb, she moved to a black neighborhood in New Orleans. “It was the first time that African Americans were my neighbors, my peers. All the rules applied to them differently. »

She taught adults “who did not know the extent of what they had not been taught” in schools where there were only used white books. They finally held their high school diploma as a huge trophy at 35, 50 or 70 years old. She saw the mothers whose boys so often left in the police car or the morgue truck.

One day, a friend offered to correspond with a man on death row. At 45, she had found a new mission.

“I became alive. I call it my inner fire.

“A South American proverb says: “What the eye cannot see, the heart cannot feel.” »

Initially, she admits, she did not go to the victims and she often admitted this error. Since the writing of Dead Man Walking (became The last step in French), his editor at Random House had him rewrite his book to describe the horror of the crime, not just the torments of the condemned – and, in this case, undoubtedly guilty – man.

“He told me: ‘You didn’t have the courage to go see the victims, you were afraid of their reaction, their rejection and their anger. Write it down.” He was right. » She set up a victim support organization at the same time.

Forty years later, the death penalty has declined significantly in the United States, since its reinstatement in 1976 – it was declared unconstitutional in 1972, because it was applied arbitrarily and in a discriminatory manner.

At the end of the 1990s, some 300 death sentences were handed down each year in the United States (nearly 9,000 over the past 48 years). There were as many as 98 executions in a single year (1999). But in 2023, there were only 21 new death sentences and 24 executions. More than 2,000 people are on death row.

While in 1984 the death penalty existed in 37 states, it has now been abolished or not used for 10 years in 35 states.

“That’s the hope part, which is not the same thing as optimism. But I’m also angry. The Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty should only be imposed for the “worst of the worst” crimes. But for the victims’ families, it is still the worst of the worst crimes. This leaves the Attorney General complete discretion to act. »

Since 1973, the Death Penalty Information Center has counted 200 cases of exonerated death row inmates nationwide.

“My anger is also because of the way in which the Supreme Court reads the 8^e amendment prohibiting “cruel and unusual” punishments. Take the injection. There is a first drug to put the person to sleep, and it paralyzes them. She can no longer open her eyes, cry, we don’t know. We did autopsies and saw fluids in the lung. The person is drowning in front of us in silence.

“Then the judges turned into pharmacists. To authorize drugs or quantities. What is cruel? Former Justice Antonin Scalia, my sworn enemy [nemesis]said that death is supposed to be painful. They committed the crime, let them suffer. They are this crime. We kill juvenile delinquents whose brains are not fully developed.

“They are not the worst of the worst, they are still poor. »

“Martin Luther King said that the most moral document in the world is a budget. What it costs to have an enforcement system. Or to provide good education and health care. »

Public opinion is still generally favorable to the death penalty, but the majority recognizes that it is not applied fairly. Public consciousness is gradually changing.

Helen Prejean helped change the view of the Catholic Church. John Paul II said in 1995 that all life is sacred and the death penalty proscribed… “except in cases of absolute necessity”.

The New Orleans prosecutor, a good Catholic, systematically called for the death penalty, saying that each time it was an “absolute necessity”.

“I wrote to the Pope telling him that we cannot be pro-life only for the innocent. » She met with him, and in 1999, in St. Louis, the pope said that no government should impose the death penalty, even for those of us who have committed terrible crimes. »

“Aren’t you overwhelmed by this struggle? »

She leans over. Takes the head.

“Sometimes I feel this great weight falling on me… I have to do this, I have to do that… I have to raise money for a DNA test, for a lawyer… But then I have a good night’s sleep. sleep. And I go to my little prayer corner. »

She shows me two images. Jesus, “who will always be with those who suffer”. And a reproduction of The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci.

“Saint Basil said in IV^e century: “Annunciations are frequent, but incarnations are rare…” I wonder: all these invitations, how am I going to incarnate them in my flesh? »

A game of cards, good food with friends (we are in Louisiana after all) and a little unblessed wine, and the rebellious sister gets back to work.

“When I meet Manuel Ortiz, innocent but on death row for 30 years, I meet courage, and then the difficulties of my life are nothing. It brings me joy. Not exuberance, not “ha ha ha”. Rather a deep satisfaction even in these terrible times in Louisiana, to meet this man, and to fight his fight with all the others. »

We didn’t even talk about the elections, but it was no surprise that when I was leaving I saw a “‘la” cap on a hook in the entrance, as in Kamala. Not surprising, given that Donald Trump executed 13 federal prisoners during his last year in office.

“I don’t wear it, it flattens my hair,” she says with a mischievous smile.