Quotes from Helen Prejean

I cannot believe in a God who metes out hurt for hurt, pain for pain, torture for torture. Nor do I believe that God invests human representatives with such power to torture and kill. The paths of history are stained with the blood of those who have fallen victim to "God's Avengers." Kings and Popes and military generals and heads of state have killed, claiming God's authority and God's blessing. I do no believe in such a God.

Waking up to the suffering of people who are different from us is a long process, and has a whole lot to do with what community we belong to and whose consciousness and life experiences impact our own on a daily basis. I have a hunch I'm going to be waking up till the moment I die.

What's good about belonging to a religious tradition is that it embeds us in a community, which sustains us in spiritual practice.

And I end by challenging people to ask themselves whether we can continue to allow the government, subject as it is to every imaginable form of inefficiency and corruption, to have such power to kill.

A society that is unable to convince individuals of its ability to exact atonement for injury is a society that runs a constant risk of having its members revert to the wilder forms of [vigilante] justice Ã¢â'¬Â¦

wrote no letters to the editor. Cool admiration, but no fire.

The mandate to practice social justice is unsettling because taking on the struggles of the poor invariably means challenging the wealthy and those who serve their interests.

I had also learned that the death penalty in the United States has always been most rigorously applied in Southern states - mostly toward those who kill whites.

She pointed out that to claim to be apolitical or neutral in the face of such injustices would be, in actuality, to uphold the status quo - a very political position to take and on the side of the oppressors.

Before, I had asked God to right the wrongs and comfort the suffering. Now I know - really know - that God entrusts those tasks to us.

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.

He contends this is not an isolated case and explains that prosecutors, judges, and juries, most of whom are white, are far more outraged when white people are murdered than when black people are.

That's why you're never going to find a rich person on death row.

Finally, Millard says, summing it all up, race, poverty, and geography determine who gets the death penalty - if the victim is white, if the defendant is poor, and whether or not the local D.A. is willing to plea-bargain.

if I were to be murdered I would not want my murderer executed. I would not want my death avenged. Especially by government — which can't be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.

Afternoon has now turned to evening. The sparrows are silent, nested up under the eaves for the night. It is time for Pat's final meal.

The sun has set behind the trees. Afternoon has now turned to evening. The sparrows are silent, nested up under the eaves for the night. It is time for Pat's final meal.

Amnesty's investigation into the judicial processes of the hundred or so governments that impose the death sentence (the United States and Turkey are the only NATO countries that continue to execute) has revealed that without exception, the penalty of death is disproportionately meted out to "the poor, the powerless, the marginalized or those whom repressive governments deem it expedient to eliminate. No government gets it right.

They want to see him made accountable for his actions. They want to see him pay for what he did. So do I. In an ideal world, there would be no need for retribution. But in real societies, punishing the guilty is as integral to the function of law as exoneration the innocent and preventing crime.

Will you dare, I ask, to condemn the unfairness inherent in the judicial system which metes out one brand of justice for the rich and one for the poor?

In the last twenty years at least forty-six people have been released from death row because the errors in their convictions were found in time to save their lives. Some are not so lucky.

Thoreau: "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men that want crops without plowing up the ground….Power concedes nothing without a demand.

St. John of the Cross gives the coda on this one: "In the evening of life we will be judged by love.