Dead Man Walking

by Helen Prejean

  The woman says to me, “Have you read the Bible, the part where God says, ‘An eye for an eye,’ and ‘Whosoever doth shed blood shall have his blood shed?’ Have you read that?” I say, yes, I’m familiar with the quote.

  “Do you know what Romans 13 says?” she asks.

  “About obeying civil authority, obeying the law, is that the one you mean?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says, her voice clipped. But she doesn’t want to talk to me anymore, about the Bible or about anything.

  “You haven’t lost a child. You don’t understand anything,” she snaps. “You’re upsetting me. Just go away and leave us alone.”

  “I’m sorry about your daughter,” I say as I move away. I hear Elizabeth saying something to her, something about my being “all right” and that I don’t try to “change” them. And I hear Vernon saying something, too, and then I’m with the Sisters, praying and looking at my watch and knowing what’s going on inside the prison and I can’t hear them anymore.

  The killing is done.

  The guards at the gate announce the time of death. The news media interview us. And everyone leaves to go home. Everyone but the Harveys and me.

  I’m waiting for a British reporter to come out of the prison. She wants to interview me and I agreed to ride back to New Orleans with her. The Harveys drive up to where I’m standing. Vernon says, “Look, I’m sorry our friend said those things to you. I guess she’s just upset.”

  I say it’s okay, I know she’s in a lot of pain, and I thank him and Elizabeth for coming to my defense. I lean over toward them seated in the front seat, my arm resting on the ledge of the open window, and we talk for a while. Vernon says that it looks as if I’ve lost another one in the chair tonight and that we’ll be having executions in this state for a long time to come, if he has anything to do with it. And I say, the day will come, someday, when the electric chair will be in a museum. He says, “Don’t hold your breath,” and he says something teasing and everybody laughs, including Lizabeth in the back seat, who listens and chimes in and pokes Vernon affectionately on the back of the head.

  “Look,” Vernon says, “it’s time you came with us to a Parents of Murdered Children meeting. You’ve been helping all these scum-balls. You ought to come find out what victims go through.”

  I know that he and Elizabeth have helped organize a victims’ group, and I had considered going to one of the meetings but backed off. I am discovering that many victims’ families, like the woman tonight, are angry at me because I oppose capital punishment. They think that compassion toward the murderer means betrayal of the victim. Why go to a meeting where I will upset people further? Already their pain is immeasurable. Why add to it? Especially since I know that there is something I cannot give them, something they may demand as a sign of loyalty and care: that I too desire the death of the one who killed their child. I know I cannot give them that. And that may only serve to upset them further.

  But I also realize I’m protecting myself. I’ve been avoiding the victims because I’m afraid they’ll turn on me and attack me. I fear their anger and rejection. Plus, I feel so helpless in face of their suffering. I don’t begin to know how to help them. In all my life I have never felt such feelings and counterfeelings, such ambivalence. On one side, I oppose the death penalty; on the other, I feel sympathy for the victims. But what to do? What to do?

  The Harveys break through my paralysis by inviting me to this meeting. If Vernon Harvey is inviting me, I must go. If I listen to people at the meeting and learn from them, I might discover a way to show I care.

  The Harveys drive off and I am standing here alone waiting for the reporter. I notice one of the guards at the gate looking intently in my direction. He knows the Harveys and what they stand for and me and what I stand for. Seeing us together like this, laughing and talking, must be puzzling to him, the way we’re acting — like friends.

  I am standing outside the door and looking down at the doorknob. I take a deep breath and ask God’s special help before I turn the knob and enter the room where the Parents of Murdered Children’s group is meeting. I immediately search out the Harveys across the room and make my way over to them. “She’s coming around, she’s beginning to see the light,” Vernon says as he introduces me to friends. I look around. It’s an all-white group — middle-income, working folks. This doesn’t surprise me. All of the counterdemonstrators we’ve encountered in our public campaigns have been white.

  I’m nervous. When the meeting begins I sit between Vernon and Elizabeth and feel safer. I feel guilty. It has taken me four years to attend one of these meetings.

  The motto of the group is “Give sorrow words,” and, oh God, they do.

  He was going out to be with the guys. I told him to take his jacket. Those were my last words to him.

  My little 12-year-old daughter was stabbed to death in our back yard by my son’s best friend. He had spent the night at our house and gone to church with us that very morning. Her little skiing outfit is still in the closet. I can’t give it away.

  When our child was killed, it took over a week to find her body. The D.A.’s office treated us like we were the criminals. Whenever we telephoned to find out what was happening, they brushed us off. They wouldn’t tell us when the trial was happening. They wouldn’t tell us anything.

  Our daughter was killed by her ex-husband in our front yard with her children watching. Bang! Bang! Bang! He shot her, then himself right there on the front lawn …

  Friends were supportive at first, at the time our son was killed, but now they avoid us. They don’t know what to say, what to do. If you bring up your child’s death, they change the subject. I keep getting the feeling that they think I should be able to put his death behind me by now and get on with my life. People have no idea what you go through when something like this happens to you.

  My wife and I went to the sheriffs office to apply for victim compensation funds. A deputy rifled through a few drawers and said, “Don’t know nothin’ about these funds. Why don’t y’all write to Ann Landers? She helps people.”

  My husband and I are getting a separation. We just have different ways of dealing with our son’s death. He wanted to get rid of all his clothes right away. I wanted to keep them. He said he had to move on in his life and I’m still grieving. “Until death do us part” has new meaning for me.

  My daughter’s killer can possibly get out on parole in another year. He’s only served six years. I can’t bear the thought that he would be out a free man and she is buried in the ground and dead forever. Six years is nothing. This isn’t justice. My husband and I are planning to attend the parole hearing.

  I lost my job. Just couldn’t pull it together. I’d be staring out of the window and couldn’t concentrate. They let me go last week.

  Vernon starts to talk about Faith. His voice breaks and he can’t speak. The room is silent.

  Afterward, in the parking lot Elizabeth and Vernon walk with me over to my car. I thank them for inviting me to the meeting. They don’t say much. They don’t have to. Late have I loved thee — the words of St. Augustine in his Confessions well up within me. I put the key into the door of the car to unlock it and decide that, whatever it takes, I am going to help murder victims’ families — as many as I can. I don’t yet know how, but I’ll find out.

  The leader had said that the group was small tonight, just a dozen people. Thank God. So much tragedy seated around one table. But courage too, and, at times, ironic humor. People talked and cried and offered encouragement and validation: “No, you’re not crazy. I’ve been through the mood swings you’re talking about … Don’t let that minister pressure you into forgiveness that you do not feel … You’re not alone in feeling guilt. I felt a lot of guilt too, I still do sometimes, but I know better how to handle it …”

  I am surprised that so many feel victimized by the criminal justice system. Insensitivity by the D.A.’s office and the police seems to be almost everyone’s experience. I am al
so surprised by people’s frequent experience of abandonment by relatives and friends. I notice that most victims mentioned tonight were killed by someone they knew. I am startled to find out that the divorce rate of couples who have lost a child is 70 percent. I see that some favor the death penalty and some do not. I find out that four to seven months after the murder is a critical time for survivors because by then the shock and numbness wear off and the loss and rage set in. I discover new meaning for the word “anniversary.” I learn that survivors may recount over and over again the terrible details of the murder because they are trying to take it in, trying to overcome their own disbelief.

  Mourning and weeping in this valley of tears … a snatch of words from a prayer comes to me as I drive home. I know that for the twelve or so grieving people who have found their way to this group tonight, there are thousands of others who are traumatized and alone. The valley of the victimized in this country is wide and deep and growing.3 In such a sea of pain what can one person do?

  Better, I decide, to try to help ten real hurting people — or nine, or one — than to be overwhelmed and withdraw and do nothing — or write an academic paper on The Problem of Evil.

  At the next Pilgrimage board meeting I propose that we inaugurate an assistance program for murder victims’ families in New Orleans. Everyone agrees. We decide to locate the program where the homicide rate is highest — in the inner city.

  Mandated by the board to pursue funding and resources, I approach churches for start-up funds, Hope House for office space, and the Mennonites for a volunteer.4 I discover that a victim assistance program such as ours — a nonprofit, community-based group — can get federal funds. In 1984 Congress passed the Victims of Crime Act, which set up the Crime Victims’ Fund, and these funds are partially dedicated to community-based victim assistance programs such as ours.5 State law-enforcement agencies administer these funds, and victim assistance groups must apply through state agencies for grants. Federal funds are not available to individuals, but state victim compensation funds are. In 1975 only ten states offered such help to victims. Now almost all of the states offer some form of compensation to victims of violent crime for expenses such as medical care, counseling, lost wages, and funeral expenses.

  But, as Elizabeth and Vernon Harvey learned, often the local law-enforcement officials, entrusted with administering state funds and educating the public about them, put little energy or enthusiasm into the task. The sheriffs deputy who advised the victim’s family to write to Ann Landers exemplifies the problem. Most sheriffs’ departments direct their energies toward punishing offenders, not helping victims.6

  Maybe one day we’ll integrate some of the principles of civil law into criminal justice, as Howard Zehr advises in his book Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice. Zehr points out that civil law defines wrongs as injuries and focuses on settlement and restitution to the victims.7 This is not to suggest that retribution or punishment of the offender does not have a place in the administration of justice, but the question for our future is whether retribution should be the only emphasis. According to the Amnesty International polls taken in four states* mentioned earlier, the American people seem to prefer a system of criminal justice which combines punishment for offenders with restitution for victims. These polls show that support for the death penalty as punishment for felony murder drops to about 50 percent when people are offered the alternative of mandatory twenty-five years’ imprisonment without possibility of parole coupled with restitution to the victim’s family from the labor of the offenders.

  But given the present system, where prisoners in state institutions make only pennies for their labors, there is no practical way for offenders to make financial restitution to their victims.

  Not yet. But that is not to say that a way cannot be found in the future. The truth is that we need to reform our system of criminal justice, and the first step toward that reform is the honest admission that the course we are now pursuing is counterproductive. Even though we execute criminals — at staggering costs — violent crime continues to rise. Between 1988 and 1992 murders nationwide increased 14 percent.8 The death penalty, although it sounds tough on crime, is actually a diversion of resources away from crime-fighting programs that truly make our streets and neighborhoods safer. Texas, for example, has more than three hundred persons on death row and executes more of its citizens each year than any other state, yet its murder rate remains one of the highest in the country. The state spends approximately $2.3 million on each capital case, a grossly disproportionate outlay of resources which forces cut-backs in other crucial areas of crime control. It is estimated for example, that prisoners in Texas, because of economic cut-backs in the criminal justice system, serve only 20 percent of their sentence and rearrests are common.

  In contrast, New York City, in a state with no death penalty, reduced its crime rate dramatically in the first four months of 1992 — murders declined by 11 percent — which many attribute to increased community policing. In 1990 the city had 750 foot officers on the streets. Today there are 3,000.9

  Similarly, in New Orleans in 1992, the year ended with a 21 percent decrease in the murder rate, halting a three-year stretch of record-breaking murder rates, a decline which police readily attribute to two federal drug-fighting programs and beefed-up police patrols in high-crime areas. Said police spokesperson Sergeant Marlon Defillo: “We are taking more guns off the street before they can be used in more crimes.”10

  The question arises: how many laid-off police officers is one execution worth?

  As I go about setting up the victim assistance group in New Orleans, I know I have everything to learn. I send off for packets of information from victim assistance programs around the country11 and telephone people who seem to have effective programs.

  How do human beings who have been devastated by the murder of a loved one recover from such a loss and pick up their lives again? What helps? What hinders?

  Janet Yassen, crisis services coordinator of the Victims of Violence Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts,12 tells me that people who come seeking help most often need at least a year for the rage, grief, and loss to settle so that they can begin to integrate what happened to them. The feelings of rage never entirely go away, she says, but gradually, over time, the “volume” goes down, and victims can accept other emotions — appreciation of beauty, ambition, friendship, trust. She emphasizes how gradual the healing is and how the steps can’t be short-circuited. Even after many years, she says, certain situations — the anniversary of the crime or reading about a similar event in the newspaper — can cause the rage and hurt to resurface.

  In August 1988, we succeed in establishing the New Orleans victim assistance group. We’ve gotten start-up funds from a few church groups, a small office at Hope House, and the Mennonite Volunteers send Dianne Kidner to launch the organization. Four years earlier I had worked to set up legal assistance for death-row inmates. Now, at last, I have done something to help victims.

  The first thing I do is take Dianne to visit the Harveys. She is eager to get their ideas about needs of victims and possible programs. When I call to arrange the visit, Elizabeth suggests a potluck meal, so I bring baked beans and Dianne brings a pie. Elizabeth has made potato salad, and Vernon barbecues hamburgers.

  Outside by the barbecue pit Vernon and I sip bourbon highballs and he tells me about different jobs he’s had in construction and how he almost died in World War II when his ship was torpedoed. He tells how he was fished out of the sea unconscious, presumed dead, and almost dumped into a body bag when someone happened to notice that he was alive.

  This only emphasizes the randomness of Faith’s death. I don’t know what to say and we’re both quiet for a while. The only sound comes from the hamburgers sizzling on the grill, and I remember what Robert had said about the electric chair: “I know it fries your ass.”

  During the meal, the talk mostly centers on Dianne’s work with victims. Dianne says she hopes
the program will empower people, so she’s thinking of not using the word “victim” in the name of the program. She tries out the name “Survive.”13 The Harveys like it.

  One day in July 1989, I get a telephone call from Elizabeth Harvey. She is worried about Vernon, who is recuperating from open-heart surgery. She says he’s been talking about giving up. “That’s just not Vern,” she says, and she wonders if I can pay him a visit. “If anybody can get him fighting, you can,” she says.

  That very afternoon I go to visit him in New Orleans Veterans’ Hospital. He and Elizabeth both looked washed out. Elizabeth has been driving back and forth across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway to see him each day while working as a cashier in a department store.

  “The damn doctors lied to me,” Vernon says to me as soon as I walk in. “They didn’t tell me I was going to hurt like this. If I had known, I would never have let them cut me,” and he shows me the red gash down the middle of his chest. He’s lying on a stretcher in the hall near his room waiting to go to X ray.

  Elizabeth tells how she and Vern have recently spent three days in court with a murder victim’s relatives from Ohio. “Their daughter was killed near the state park in Mandeville,” Elizabeth says, “and here they come for the trial all alone, not knowing the court procedures or anything. Vern and I explained to them what was going to happen in court.”

  Vernon fidgets on the stretcher. “You wait forever in this damn place,” he says.

  “Know what they should’ve done with Willie?” he says. “They should’ve strapped him in that chair, counted to ten, then at the count of nine taken him out of the chair and let him sit in his cell for a day or two and then strapped him in the chair again. It was too easy for him. He went too quick.”