An Invitation from Sister Helen Prejean

      "the earthen vessel may hold the rarest wine
      the handwrought silver goblet - gall
      the tattered cover - words of wisdom
      the gold-edged leaf - the cruelest lie
      stumbling words - love's true oath
      the silver tongue - a razor's edge
      the truth arrives disguised,
      therein the sorrow lies"

      -- Jimmy Glass
      Executed in Louisiana, 1984.

      Sister Helen Prejean of the Moratorium
      Campaign, Paul Hoffman of Amnesty
      International, and Mario Marazziti of
      Sant' Egidio Community present Kofi
      Annan with a petition calling for a
      moratorium on the death penalty.

Dear friends,

In December 2004, I published my second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions.  My first book was Dead Man Walking, first published in 1993.  I never dreamed one little book could have such power to unleash discussion and debate.  Tim Robbins' film happened in 1996 and Jake Heggie composed the opera, which premiered in San Francisco in 2000 and now makes its way around the world.  I also get on the road and give talks to civic groups, universities, churches and synagogues - a lot of talks over the past twenty years.  It's amazing what happens to audiences as they hear stories and get information about the death penalty.  They change their views and form long lines to sign the petition calling for a moratorium on the death penalty.  In 2001, my organization, The Moratorium Campaign, together with the Sant' Egidio Community and Amnesty International, presented the secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, with petitions containing over 3.2 million signatures, and those signatures keep on rolling in today.

It's just that a lot of people are sleeping.  They need waking up.  I've been amazed at their good hearts, their decency.  They really don't want the government to kill people but they've had no one to bring them close to the issue of the death penalty and wake them up.

I need your help to spread the word about The Death of Innocents across cyberspace.  I believe that electronic communication is the greatest grass-roots means of conveying information to masses of people, and I want to utilize that energy to get my new book into the hands of as many Americans as possible.

The book contains the stories of two men I believe to be innocent who were executed and whom I accompanied to their deaths.  The stories are going to break your heart.  Then there's the story of the Supreme Court and the appeals courts which deny constitutional rights and rubber stamp death sentences without ever allowing a fresh hearing of the evidence.  I encountered Justice Antonin Scalia in the New Orleans airport (would you believe he goes duck hunting with my brother Louie in Louisiana?).  My encounter with him opens the chapter entitled "The Machinery of Death."  The last chapter is called "The Death of Innocence" and tells stories of jurors and prosecutors and judges and wardens and politicians who get tainted and corrupted by the death penalty.  In the end, with government killings snaring both innocent and guilty alike, we all lose our innocence.

My hope is that this book will help us bring about the end of the death penalty.

Will you join me?

Sister Helen Prejean