ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 13, 1994                   TAG: 9403060210
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: 6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by NELSON HARRIS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

REFLECTIONS FROM A DEATH-ROW MINISTRY

DEAD MAN WALKING: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. By Helen Prejean, C.S.J. Random House. $21.

"Dead Man Walking" is one of the most provocative and personal examinations of capital punishment within contemporary literature.

The work is based upon the ministry of Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun in New Orleans, who began an outreach to death row inmates as an extension of her work with the impoverished. This, her first book, deals primarily with her relationship to two inmates who were executed by the state of Louisiana in the 1980s.

The author is strongly against capital punishment and advocates her position throughout the book; yet her challenge to readers to re-examine their own positions on the subject is done at a personal versus theoretical level. Prejean goes to great lengths to humanize the death row criminal, while at the same time expressing compassion for the accused's victims. Prejean's ministry and experience are centered on the tension of trying to speak for both the perpetrator and the victim.

The most gripping elements in the work are the author's accounts of final days and minutes spent with the inmates as they await their executions. The death row emotions of fear and courage, repentence and pride, shame and dignity collide to reveal compelling and chilling insights into the men and women executed by the state.

"Dead Man Walking" is well-written, fluid and concise. The author covers much territory - emotional, theological and political - within the 245 pages of text. Furthermore, Prejean provides extensive notes for those wishing to do further research in the subject.

"Dead Man Walking" provides solid, although biased reflection upon the important questions surrounding one of America's most controversial moral and legal issues. Readers of all persuasions will be hard-pressed not to be influenced by the work's revelations and implications.

- Nelson Harris is pastor of the Ridgewood Baptist Church. 


 by CNB