SISTER HELEN PREJEAN SPEAKS IN NASHVILLE

For Dead Man Walking - the Journey Continues World Famous Author Says...

Nashville, TN: Sister Helen Prejean never thought of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States as a book that would shoot to number one on the New York Times Best Seller List for 31 weeks. It also was an international best seller and has been translated into ten different languages. Sister Helen, as most people refer to her, is publishing a sequel and stopped in Nashville Monday to talk about her work to abolish the death penalty and the book.

"The book is a vehicle with which I hope to widen the circle of public discourse on the death penalty," Prejean told the rapt crowd Monday evening. "This is the way that we will one day abolish its practice. This is what you are doing here in Tennessee around cases like that of Paul Gregory House."

In 2002 the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, cited DNA evidence that raised the possibility that an innocent man might be on Tennessee's death row. Paul House was convicted of murdering a neighbor, Carolyn Muncey, in Union County, Tenn., in 1985. The prosecution argued that he had first raped her, saying that semen found on her clothing matched his blood type. The jury cited the rape as a reason for imposing death. But DNA testing, which was not available at the time, has proved that the semen was that of Mrs. Muncey's husband, Hubert.

Then, on October 7th, 2004 the 15-judge 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel voted 8-7 strictly along partisan lines that House should neither be freed nor granted a new trial, upholding a shaky federal ruling five years earlier. Eight Republican appointees voted to keep House on death row, six Democratic appointees voted to free him and a seventh called for a new trial.

Now the national attention focused on the case of innocent death row inmate Paul Gregory House has brought warranted but unwanted scrutiny upon the state's death penalty system.

"Presently there are hopeful signs that among the American people a new consciousness about the death penalty is dawning," Prejean told the large crowd Monday evening. "Because of the huge number of wrongfully convicted people freed from death row - 117 at present and growing - many Americans have begun to have doubts about the death penalty. For most citizens it is morally unconscionable to think that innocent people are being put to death along with the guilty."

"What's important in the educational process is that we help people recognize the human face even of those who have done terrible crimes," said Prejean. "In helping people navigate their way through the issue of the death penalty, we must help people deal with the feelings of outrage they feel when terrible crimes are committed. In fact, we want to legitimize those feelings of outrage as morally legitimate feelings. Who can help but feel outrage when innocent human life has been wantonly violated? We must help people to get past the visceral response of an "eye for an eye" vengeance. Transforming hatred of an enemy into compassion is what lies at the spiritual core of all religions."

"The serious problems that plague the administration of Tennessee's death penalty system are no different than those that led former Illinois Governor George Ryan to stop executions in that state and initiate a thorough and independent study of that state's system," said Randy Tatel, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing. "The citizens of Tennessee are just as deserving as the citizens in Illinois. We too need to know how and why we are sentencing innocent people like Paul House to death."