Summary
Sister Helen Prejean’s friend, Chava Colon from the Prison
Coalition, asks her if she would be willing to correspond with a
death row inmate. He assigns Prejean to Elmo Patrick Sonnier, a
man convicted of raping and murdering a young woman and her boyfriend. Sonnier
comes from a pleasant, rural Cajun community in Louisiana.
Prejean describes how she came to work and live in the
St. Thomas housing project in New Orleans in June of 1981. A spiritual enlightenment
forced her to recognize that Jesus challenged the affluent to share
their resources with the poor. As a result, she began working with
the poor.
The residents of St. Thomas, and the working poor of Louisiana in
general, endure daily struggles and police brutality. Prejean works
with teenage single mothers who are unable to making a living from
their minimum wage pay. The Reagan administration slashes funding
for social services, while the incarceration rate more than doubles
in a decade. Although life is bleak in St. Thomas, Prejean derives
hope and inspiration from a young boy working after school to help
buy clothes for his sister, and the college graduate creating self-help
programs. Prejean, who had a comfortable and loving childhood, says
that she doesn’t know how law-abiding she would be if she had been
born into a similar life of poverty.
Prejean sends Patrick a letter and three pictures of herself.
She tries to imagine what type of man he is, and the suffering of
the victims’ family. Patrick writes back saying he would enjoy exchanging letters
with her because it’s “just too hard” to be alone on death row. A
steady correspondence develops. Patrick describes his cell, in which
he spends twenty-three out of every twenty-four hours. He is completely
alone. His mother is too old to visit, and his brother Eddie is
serving life in the same prison, Angola, for the same crime.
Prejean asks Chava Colon for Patrick’s files. Chava tells
Prejean that a week after Patrick’s conviction, the trial judge
mailed Patrick the date of his execution, and his court-appointed
lawyer quit. Chava says that it is difficult to find lawyers to
represent the convicts. Patrick has a new volunteer lawyer from
Louisiana.
Prejean reads the newspaper clippings, which describe
the happy lives of the victims and details their brutal murder and
rape. Patrick and his brother confessed during the trial, although
each blamed the other for pulling the trigger. Patrick was sentenced
to death, and Eddie was sentenced to life in prison. Eddie recanted
his testimony and said he pulled the trigger, but a new jury sentenced
Patrick to death once more. The depravity of the crime stuns Prejean.
