Sr. Prejean's involvement with poor, inner-city residents in the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans in 1981 led her to prison ministry where she counseled death row inmates in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. She has accompanied three men to the electric chair and witnessed their deaths. Since then, she has devoted her energies to educating the public about the death penalty by lecturing, organizing, and writing. She also has befriended murder victims' families and helped found Survive, a victims' advocacy group in New Orleans.
Sr. Helen Prejean, C.S.J.
Recently nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, Sr. Helen Prejean has become an internationally known opponent of capital punishment. Her book Dead Man Walking was on the New York Times best seller list for 31 weeks. It was also on the International best seller list and has been translated into nine different languages. Currently, she continues her ministry to death row inmates and murder victims' families and is at work on a book about women's struggles for equality in the Roman Catholic Church (to be published by Random House). In June 1995 she became a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship which she will use to conduct the research on the book..