Dead Man Walking

by Helen Prejean

  He says he’s been thinking of a much more effective way to prevent murders. “What we do is fry the bastards on prime-time TV, that’s what we oughta do. Show them dying in the electric chair, say, at eight at night, and see if that doesn’t give second thoughts to anybody thinking of murder.”

  I say that maybe what an execution does is show that the state can kill as well as anyone else, and that what people learn from such an example is that when you have a really bad problem with someone, what you do is kill him.

  Vernon says I have got to be kidding, and here we go again, Vernon and I playing our familiar roles, jousting with each other about the death penalty.

  I tell him that the people doing the thinking and the people doing the killing are not the same people.

  “That’s because we’re not executing enough of ‘em,” Vernon retorts. “We have to make executions more frequent and more consistent. No exceptions.”

  “But money and race and politics and the discretion we leave to D.A.s is always going to keep it from being a uniform and fair process,” I say, “and even locale plays a part. Some states have the death penalty and some don’t.”

  Vernon is getting some color in his face.

  Elizabeth looks relieved.

  An attendant has now appeared to bring Vernon to X ray. “What we really oughta do,” he says as his stretcher begins to move away, proving to me just how effective my arguments have been, “we oughta do to them exactly what they did to their victim. Willie should’ve been stabbed seventeen times, that’s what we oughta do to them.”

  I tell him to hang in there and I’ll he coming back with an apple pie.

  One evening in January 1991, I’m facing another doorknob and taking a deep breath before I turn it. Behind it are members of Survive, the victim assistance group begun by Dianne Kidner and now directed by Mary Riley, another Mennonite volunteer. During the two years Dianne worked with victims she mostly helped individuals, but now Mary has moved the organization toward group self-help and has begun weekly gatherings on Monday nights in one of the conference rooms at the Loyola University law school. Under Mary’s direction, membership has been steadily growing and it now numbers about forty people — mostly indigent black women trying to cope with the death of sons, daughters, spouses, parents. Mostly sons — almost all of them killed with guns. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. If sounds of the killings could be accumulated and played back, it would sound like a war — which, in fact, it is. The Louisiana Weekly, a black-owned newspaper, ran a full page listing the name and race of the 323 homicide victims in New Orleans in 1990 (284 were black) with the headline: “For the City of New Orleans, Saddam Hussein Was Not the Only Horror of the Year.”14

  And Dr. Frank Minyard, Orleans Parish coroner, in a recent newspaper interview said, “Between AIDS, drugs, murder, police, prisons … You talk about genocide: by the year 2000 we will have lost a whole generation. There will be no more black males between the ages of 30 and 40.”15

  I open the door.

  I feel prepared for what I will hear tonight. “Braced,” maybe, is a better word because almost every week at Hope House staff meetings I hear stories of shoot-outs and deaths in the St. Thomas Housing Development.

  As the stories begin, I think of the plagues visited on Egypt recorded in the Book of Exodus. The last plague was the worst — the slaying of the firstborn sons of the Egyptians. The Israelites who had put lamb’s blood over their doorposts were spared by the Avenging Angel. But no one here tonight seemed able to get the blood on the doorpost in time, and some have been visited by the Avenging Angel more than once.

  How do I introduce myself — as the mother of six or the mother of four? I guess I’ll say six even though two of my sons were killed, both of them shot, five months apart. I’ve been angry at God and confused because I have really tried to do right, go to church every Sunday, and give a good home to my kids and I thought that would protect us.

  My son was abducted and shot twelve times. It was just a few days before he was to appear as a witness to a drug-related murder. He had seen two boys killing someone. We had gotten threats and I had called the D.A.’s office and asked for protection. I sent my other son to the country to stay with kinfolk. They was callin’ and threatenin’ him too.

  Well, they know me at City Hall, yes, they do, because I still get out there with my picket sign and I let them know I know my son was set up to be killed by the police. He had been dating a white girl, a policeman’s daughter, and I’m gonna stand up to ‘em ‘til the day I die.

  My son was shot by his girlfriend. She just got a gun and shot him in the eye, his right eye, and I’m going to have to quit my second job so I can pay more attention to my younger daughter. I’m so worried about that child.

  I keep wanting to stay in bed and sleep and not get up. If I can just get through my boy’s birthday, then Christmas … I’ve lost three children: the first was a crib death, my three-year-old died of hepatitis, and now my twenty-four-year-old son was shot to death.

  I had to drop out of LPN [licensed practical nurse] school for the second time now. Got a bad case of nerves.

  I keep waitin’ for my boy to knock on the door. Seven times, that was his little knock and I’d say, “Who’s there?” and he’d say, “Me, Baby,” and the newspaper told it wrong. They talked about my boy’s murder like it was just another drug-related murder. They don’t know who shot my boy. The killer’s still out there somewhere.

  My eighty-three-year-old father was shot in cold blood. I think it was because he was speaking out about crime in the neighborhood.

  My son was a crack cocaine addict. I called his parole officer and tried to get him to arrest him but the officer said my boy was hopeless, that it was no use. They found him shot.

  I went to several stores where they sell guns — not to buy one exactly, I just asked about buying one. It was so easy. All I had to do was show a picture ID … All these young kids are totin’ guns — handguns, sawed-off shotguns, .357 Magnums, Uzis. Even thirteen-year-olds have guns. They go in people’s houses and steal them.

  As each of the women speaks, a litany punctuates the testimonies — “Oh, Lord … Yes, Lord … Jesus … Say it … Amen … Jesus, help us … God makes a way out of no way” — and sometimes soft moans and tears and heads bent down and then raised up, and at times hands reaching to clasp another hand.

  Some talk of considering suicide, of staying in bed and sleeping, of numbing the pain with alcohol or drugs. They talk of confusion and bewilderment. But mostly they talk about carrying on. The struggle for physical survival — meeting utility and rent payments, putting food on the table, taking sick children to Charity Hospital — helps keep them going. Except for the one woman who pickets in front of city hall, it seems to be a given, a fact of life, that no one expects anything from the criminal justice system.

  A pattern emerges: of the forty or so members of Survive, only one hopes to see her child’s murderer brought to trial. Maybe, another member cautions. She, too, had thought her child’s killer would be brought to trial, only to be told that the charges had been dropped because of “insufficient evidence.”

  One case in forty of a perpetrator brought to trial is not a very good track record for a D.A.’s office. I soon discover that in the majority of these cases the perpetrator is still at large, or, if apprehended, kept in jail for a short while, then freed. A good number of Survive members have never been interviewed by investigating officials. Some have never seen a document of any kind — a medical or autopsy report or even a death certificate.

  Granted, even the most fair-minded law enforcement officials face a substantial challenge in a city as crime-ridden as New Orleans. First there is the sheer volume of homicides, where in a single weekend there might be as many as four murders, especially in poor black neighborhoods, where most homicides take place.16 The police are not legally required to investigate every reported crime.17 Then there is the difficulty of getting witnesses
to come forward. Blacks in low-income housing projects are reluctant witnesses because they both distrust the police and fear retaliation from drug dealers. Nor are police investigators eager to conduct investigations in violence-ridden neighborhoods.

  In such circumstances “equal protection of the laws,” a Fourteenth Amendment right, is indeed a challenge. Yet some tough cases show that where there is resolve, results can be expeditious.

  A recent New Orleans case comes to mind of a judge’s son who was murdered. The young man, who had been to a bar, was killed in the street near the bar in the early-morning hours. There were no witnesses to the crime, yet within four days of vigorous investigation two suspects were arrested, charged, and jailed. A high bond was set, and the suspects were kept in jail pending trial.18

  In 1989, there were 249 homicides in New Orleans. Eighty-five percent of the victims were black. Sixteen offenders were convicted and jailed.19

  My hunch is that the large number of “unsolved” murders of black victims is not unique to New Orleans, but I discover that the Bureau of Justice Statistics does not track the race of the victim in its records of “unsolved” murders.

  The “Chattahoochee Report,” whose findings were presented to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Georgia House of Representatives on July 9, 1991, revealed strong racial bias in the way some D.A.s prosecute murder cases. The study of murder cases in a six-county area in Georgia from 1973 to 1990 found that although blacks made up 65 percent of murder victims and whites, 35 percent, the death penalty was sought in 85 percent of murder cases that involved white victims but only in 15 percent of those cases that involved black victims.20

  The section of the “Chattahoochee Report” entitled “Victims’ Families: A Contrast in Black and White” could have been transcribed from a Survive meeting. Numerous black families in Columbus County, where the death penalty has been vigorously sought, testified that despite the D.A.’s protestation that he always met with victims’ families, he had not in fact ever visited them. In contrast, the study shows, when the victim was white, the D.A. was solicitous of the family’s feelings, often paying them courtesy visits at their homes and then announcing at a press conference that he would seek the death penalty.

  The report cites one such highly publicized case in Columbus in which the homicide victim was the daughter of a prominent white contractor: “D.A., William J. Smith, phoned to ask the contractor personally what punishment he wanted the D.A. to seek. When the contractor told him to go for the death penalty, Smith told him that was all he needed to hear. He secured a death sentence and was rewarded with a $5,000 contribution — his largest single contribution — to run for judge in the next election.”21

  In cases involving black victims, however, the report states, “not only did none of the murders of their relatives lead to a capital trial, but officials often treated them as criminals”:

  Jimmy Christian was informed by the police in 1988 that his son had been murdered. That was the last he heard from any officials. He was never advised of any court proceedings. When an arrest was made, he heard about it on the street. He was not informed of the trial date or the charges.

  Johnny Johnson came home from church in 1984 to find the body of his wife, her throat cut. His one contact with officials occurred when he was briefly jailed on suspicion of her murder.

  Mildred Brewer witnessed the shooting of her daughter in 1979. Instead of being allowed to accompany her in the ambulance to the hospital, she was taken to police headquarters and questioned for three hours — during which her daughter died. When a suspect was arrested, tried and sentenced, Mrs. Brewer heard nothing from the D.A.22

  And so it goes.

  The Survive meeting ends, heads all bowed in prayer. Later, people cluster in small groups, chatting and sipping drinks that some of the women have provided. All the sorrow and loss is overwhelming, yet I don’t feel devastated. There’s something in the women themselves that strengthens me. I think of the rallying cry of black women of South Africa: “You have struck the women. You have struck the rock.” Maybe it’s because black people, especially black women, have suffered for such a long, long time. Seasoned sufferers, they have grace, tenacity, a great capacity to absorb pain and loss and yet endure. God makes a way out of no way. For these women this is no empty, pious sentiment. It is the air they breathe, the bread they eat, the path they walk.

  A ripple of laughter bubbles up from one end of the room and I see Shirley Carr slip her arm comfortingly around another woman’s shoulders. Shirley was the first to speak tonight, telling of her two sons killed five months apart. She’s worked through the paralysis of her grief and is now able to accompany others through the phases and seasons of denial and guilt, rage and loss, withdrawal and despair. Mary sees that when her term of service is up, Shirley will likely take over directorship of the group. Development of self-help and local leadership is important in the Mennonite philosophy.

  Mary Riley and I have become friends, and we look for ways to build bridges between our two organizations — Pilgrimage, our abolitionist group, and Survive. When people join Pilgrimage, besides inviting them to become pen pals to death-row inmates, we also encourage them to volunteer their services to Survive or to other victim assistance groups in their town or city.

  Lloyd LeBlanc, the father of young, murdered David. With him, I end this narrative.

  In the years immediately after Pat Sonnier’s Pardon Board hearing, my encounters with Lloyd were friendly but tentative. We talked on the telephone, wrote notes. I paid a few visits. My first visits to his home in St. Martinville had been especially difficult for Eula, Lloyd’s wife. The thought of someone coming into her house who had befriended her son’s murderers was at first too much for her. When I would come, she would leave the house. It’s better now.

  One day two years ago in a telephone conversation, Lloyd said that he goes to pray every Friday from 4:00 to 5:00 A.M. in a small “perpetual adoration” chapel in St. Martinville, and I asked if I might join him. He said he would like that very much. I know I want to do this, even if it’s four o’clock in the morning. Words of Rainer Maria Rilke come:

  Work of the eyes is done, now

  go and do heart-work.23

  I drive into Baton Rouge the night before to shorten the distance of the drive, and Louie comes to sleep over at Mama’s house so we can save time in the morning. Good brother that he is, he says I should not make the trip alone. We have figured that if we leave Baton Rouge at 2:45 we can reach St. Martinville by 4:00. Louie fills the thermos with coffee.

  Riding in the dark across Acadian Louisiana reminds me of when I was eight years old and I would get up with Mama during Lent to go to early-morning Mass. I remember the still, cold air, the feeling of mystery that is always there in the dark when you are awake and the rest of the world is asleep.

  In his note Lloyd has told me how he prays for “everyone, especially the poor and suffering.” He prays for “the repose of the soul” of David and for his wife, Eula. He prays in thanksgiving for his daughter, Vickie, and her four healthy children. It is the grandchildren — little Ryan, Derek, Megan, and Jacob — who have brought Eula back to life — but it has taken a long, long time. For a year after David’s murder, Lloyd had frequently taken her to visit David’s grave. Unless he took her there, he once told me, “she couldn’t carry on, she couldn’t pick up the day, she couldn’t live.” For three years his wife had cried, and he said the house was like a tomb and he found himself working long hours out of the house “to keep my sanity.”

  Once, during one of my visits, he took me to his office — he is a construction worker — and showed me the grandfather clock he was making after his day’s work was done. “It’s good to keep busy,” he says.

  Lloyd LeBlanc prays for Loretta Bourque and her family. The Bourques had been more anxious than he to witness the execution of Patrick Sonnier. The day before the Pardon Board was to hear Pat’s appeal,
members of the Bourque family had visited Lloyd to urge him to attend the hearing and press for the death sentence. A few months earlier, trying to evade witnessing the execution, Lloyd had asked his brother to take his place, but the brother had a heart attack and couldn’t.

  There, at the Pardon Board hearing, Lloyd LeBlanc had done what was asked of him. Speaking for both families, he asked that the law of execution be carried out. But after the execution he was troubled and sought out his parish priest and went to confession.

  Now, Lloyd LeBlanc prays for the Sonniers — for Pat and for Eddie and for Gladys, their mother. “What grief for this mother’s heart,” he once said to me in a letter. Yes, for the Sonniers, too, he prays. He knows I visit Eddie, and in his letters he sometimes includes a ten-dollar bill with the note: “For your prison ministry to God’s children.” And shortly before Gladys Sonnier’s death in January 1991, Lloyd LeBlanc went to see her to comfort her.

  Louie and I drive Interstate 10 West, then turn off at Breaux Bridge for the last twenty miles. We go through Parks, the last place David and Loretta were seen alive, and drive into the parking lot of the very old wooden church of St. Martin of Tours. Light shines in a steady slant from the tall stained-glass window of the chapel. Red, green, and yellow speckle the grass. All around is darkness. Nearby, large hundred-year-old oak trees spread their branches.

  I tap the door of the chapel and a young woman with long dark hair lets us in with a quiet smile. She has a blanket around her. Her hour of vigil has been from three to four o’clock. We find out that she has eight children. Her husband preceded her in prayer earlier in the night. Louie and I are glad to get out of the cold. The fall weather is setting in.

  Inside the chapel I see a sign hand-printed in black letters on white paper, a quotation from the Gospel of John: “Because you have seen me, you believe. Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.” The round wafer of bread consecrated at Mass is elevated in a gold vessel with clear glass at the center so the host can be seen. Gold rays, emanating outward, draw the eye to the center. Two pews along the back wall. Two kneelers, four red sanctuary candles on the floor. On the wall a crucifix and a picture of Mary, the mother of Jesus.