Dead Man Walking

Helen Prejean

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1993

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-11

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary

Leaving the Harveys’ house shaken by the sheer weight of their loss, Prejean understands the desire for retribution but insists that the proper way to achieve it is through long mandatory sentences of at least a few decades. When such policies are in place, support for capital punishment tends to decline, since the odds of reoffending are incredibly low. She also dreads the media circus that will surround the Harveys as Willie’s execution approaches, that his name will ultimately loom larger in the public imagination than those of his victims. Prejean is tempted to share the Harveys’ outrage with Willie, especially given his seemingly carefree attitude, but remembers that his looming execution is an injustice.

Visiting Willie for the second time, she confronts him with the horrific reality of his crime, and he puts the blame for the girl’s death on his accomplice. He also talks about his difficult childhood and how he had developed a drug addiction by the seventh grade. When Prejean continues to push him, he once again blames his accomplice and says “I wasn’t thinkin’ straight” (146). He is angry with the Harveys for urging his execution in public, but understands that if he were in their position he would feel the same. He reminisces about an affair he had with an older, married woman. Prejean urges him to read the Bible, but notes that he has a long way to go on the path to redemption, especially after making racist remarks. One positive sign is that he is leading a class action lawsuit calling for better prison conditions, even though he is unlikely to ever enjoy them. Prejean finds records indicating a number of relevant facts: Willie acted cruelly toward his victims in court; he has a long criminal history; and there is evidence that his accomplice was illiterate and offered contradictory confessions. She also finds evidence of impropriety during his trial, including a failure to exclude potentially biased jurors and to include so-called “mitigation witnesses” who might testify to his character (155). Only the Parole Board is left to spare him from the death penalty.

Chapter 8 Summary

Millard and Prejean are preparing for Willie’s Pardon hearing—the same people they faced about Sonnier’s case and who have since sent two others to the electric chair. The District Attorney is under intense pressure to follow through with the death penalty, after a plea deal he accepted in a previous, roughly similar case provoked a fierce backlash. Traveling once again to Angola, Prejean meets with Willie, who has prepared a statement for the Pardon board. He insists that the case is “politically motivated” (160), accuses the Assistant District Attorney of placing his mother in jail in order to punish him, and that his defense counsel was inadequate. Prejean advises him to tone down criticisms of the process, which the Board might take as an attack on their integrity, but he tells her “I don’t grovel to nobody” (163).

The Harveys attend the hearing, along with Willie’s mother. She greets Vernon, who implies that the Black members of the Pardon Board will be biased in favor of a criminal defendant. Willie attends this meeting (unlike Sonnier), and his side goes first. One of Millard’s attorneys calls attention to procedural flaws, and his mother tries to speak on his behalf, but struggles to get the words out. Willie reads his prepared statement, and then Prejean calls on them “to take personal responsibility for the role they are playing in the killing of this man if they uphold his death sentence” (167). The prosecuting side gives a short but effective presentation calling out Willie’s lack of remorse for his actions, and the Harveys again argue that only death can prevent Willie from killing again. Prejean has little confidence in her desired result, and the board returns promptly with a unanimous decision rejecting Willie’s appeal. Prejean tries to console Willie’s mother and then turns to find the Harveys, but they have already left.

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Several years later, Prejean meets with Howard Marsellus, the head of the Pardon Board. In 1986, he was arrested for taking bribes to uphold death sentences. He tells of one case where he was deeply skeptical of the defendant’s guilt and was pushing for clemency, until someone from the governor’s office insisted he “handle it” and spare the governor the political fallout (171). He says that Governor Edwards personally intervened to compel witnesses to change their stories and oversee the distribution of bribes. Marsellus is wracked with guilt over the six men he put to death, some of whom clearly did not have the necessary intent to kill that is used to justify a death sentence under Louisiana law.

Chapters 7-8 Analysis

Prejean’s choice to discuss Robert Lee Willie’s case on the heels of the Sonnier case serve to solidify her belief in The Injustice of the Death Penalty: By making the case that Willie, like Sonnier, does not deserve his execution, she circumvents the potential criticism that her support for death penalty abolition is rooted in the fact that she cherry picks sympathetic offenders. Willie is a challenging figure. Sonnier had also committed great evil, and Prejean is never able to determine his precise level of guilt, but he is courteous with her and the guards. While Sonnier insists that he did not commit rape or pull the trigger, he seems to understand that he did a wicked thing deserving punishment. Willie does not appear to express any remorse, instead blaming his accomplice and his drug problems and insisting that he is justified in taunting the parents of his victims since they have publicly called of his execution. In lieu of Accepting Personal Responsibility, he uses his own looming execution as a way to shift blame onto those who have condemned him.

The closest Willie ever gets to an apology is saying, “I know the death of Miss Hathaway has caused a lot of pain and sorrow for her family members and I truly regret everting that has happened. But my death is not going to bring Miss Hathaway back to this earth” (161). He assigns himself no agency in her horrific death and uses his looming execution as a way to make himself victim and cause. Willie’s lack of remorse is troubling, made worse by his racist rants, but Prejean suggests that the fact that the state is putting him to death allows him to establish a kind of moral equivalency, even if shakily and in bad faith. While his guilt is not in doubt, either for the crime itself or for meriting a capital sentence under the law, he is another poor man who had ineffective counsel and who will go to the chair not necessarily because he is the most deserving, but because he marked an easy victory for prosecutors and the Pardon Board. His execution, believes Prejean, only makes matters worse because it allows Willie to posture as a rebel and outlaw, thumbing his nose at those who would have him killed (especially the victim’s parents). In keeping with the theme of Christian Mercy Versus Christian Legalism, Prejean’s later interview with Howard Marsellus reveals that it is not the threat of death that breeds contrition, but the long experience of living with one’s sins: Willie could have been an old man seeking forgiveness, but instead he died a young man convinced that the US government was the real murderer all along.