In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean was invited to write a letter to a man on death row named Elmo Patrick Sonnier. She told us, “I thought that all I was going to be doing was writing letters. And lo and behold, two years later, I am in that execution chamber.” When we spoke to her in 2021, she was 81, and had been present at the executions of six men.
Sister Helen’s book, Dead Man Walking, is about her time as a spiritual advisor to Elmo Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie.
This episode was originally released in 2021. {listen}
In fact, with Patrick Sonnier, he had said to me, ‘Sister, you can’t be there at the end. You can’t watch this. It’s electrocution. It could scar you psychologically to see this.’ He was really trying to protect me. And I said to him, ‘Pat, I don’t know what– I’ve never done this before, but I know this: you are not gonna die
without seeing one face in that witness room that loves you and believes in your dignity. And when they do this, you look at me. I will be there for you.