Death penalty talk by Sister Helen slated in Adrian

4/2/2005

ADRIAN, Mich. - Sister Helen Prejean, author of the best-selling book Dead Man Walking, will discuss the death penalty in a lecture at 8 p.m. tomorrow in Lumen Ecclesiae Chapel, 1247 East Siena Heights Dr., Adrian.

The talk will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

Sister Helen, whose most recent book is The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille in 1957 and began her prison ministry in 1981.

Her experience as a spiritual adviser to Patrick Sonnier, a death row inmate at Louisiana's Angola State Prison, inspired her to write Dead Man Walking, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, spent 31 weeks atop the New York Times best-seller list, and was turned into a Hollywood movie in 1996.