The mood of the American people concerning the death penalty is beginning to change, according to a campaigner against it.
Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, was in Dublin yesterday with the Community of Sant Egidio to launch a petition to the UN seeking the end of the death penalty internationally. This community consists of young Catholics who campaign for social justice, she said.
She was speaking to Lifelines, an organisation whose members correspond with people sentenced to death and awaiting execution.
Sister Prejean had been campaigning against the death penalty since she befriended a condemned man, Patrick Sonnier, in 1984, and accompanied him to the electric chair.
"It changed my life," she said. She wrote Dead Man Walking in 1993 and it was made into a film of the same name in 1996.
She collaborated closely with the filming, and has nothing but praise for those involved. "Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are very principled people," she said.
She points out that only a tiny minority of those convicted of murder in the US are selected for the death penalty.
"It's a very uneven playing field. It's overwhelmingly the poor who are selected. There are 17,000 homicides in the US, but only between 1 1/2 and 2 per cent of those lead to the death penalty."
"Eighty-two innocent people came off death row in the US, not because of the courts, but because of film directors and campaigners. There are nearly two million people in jail in the US, at a cost of about $17,000 a person a year.
"In New York a Catholic politician, George Pataki, campaigned for the death penalty. Since it was introduced there have been 488 homicide cases, and 38 selected for the death penalty, of which five have been sentenced to death. The whole process has cost the state $68 million."
The daughter of a lawyer, Sister Prejean became a teacher. It was when she was working with the poor that she became shocked at what happens to people with no resources, especially in the legal system.
"People in the US are not wedded to the death penalty. In New Jersey recently a poll showed support for it at 63 per cent, and this fell to below half when the alternative was life imprisonment.
"But the politicians will be the last to change. They've been able to use it as a symbol and not face the causes of violence in our society."
She is grateful that the film has generated debate on the issue, especially in the US. "I have accompanied five people to the electric chair and watched them die. I can't stop till we change this thing."
Lifelines Ireland can be contacted at 33 Riverside Grove, Clonshaugh, Dublin 17, tel (01) 830-5441.