Cut Off the Louisiana Pricks

Interview with Sister Helen Prejean on Hardball with Chris Matthews, January 6th:


MATTHEWS: Sister Helen Prejean is well known for her book Dead Man Walking, where she was played by Susan Sarandon in the movies about the death penalty in America.
She has a new book, The Death of Innocents, which covers the cases of two men, both executed for murder she says these two guys did not commit.

Sister Prejean, thank you very much for joining us.
What‘s the worst thing about capital punishment?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: What it does to the society that practices it, all the people that get involved, the people who have to carry it out, prosecutors or people that get under pressure and go for the death penalty when they shouldn‘t or...

MATTHEWS: But doesn‘t executing someone guarantee that no one else will ever be killed by that person?

PREJEAN: It at least does that. But the states that practice capital punishment the most have roughly double the homicide rate of states that don‘t.

MATTHEWS: Well, you can‘t prove causality, can you?

PREJEAN: Well...

MATTHEWS: There are states who are simply more—the society is a bit more violent than it is in other states.
I mean, you have countries like England and Belgium and Holland where nobody kills anybody. And you have got other countries where a lot of people kill each other.

PREJEAN: No, right. But you know what I learned about it? I learned this in “Dead Man Walking,” even more so in this book. The selectivity. There are about 15,000 homicides, murders, a year. And less than 2 percent of people are selected to die, eight out of every 10 of them in Southern states...

MATTHEWS: Anybody rich ever executed?

PREJEAN: Never.

MATTHEWS: Anybody famous, famous for something besides killing somebody?

PREJEAN: I don‘t know. Well, O.J. Simpson, it sure helped him to be famous.


MATTHEWS: Well, that chicken prosecutor wouldn‘t even call him for capital punishment, because he knew he wouldn‘t have a chance.

PREJEAN: Yes, really.

MATTHEWS: But you‘re saying it is basically about class. It‘s—I also think sometimes it is about looks. Some of these guys just look bad. They‘re tough-looking customers.

PREJEAN: Right.

MATTHEWS: And the juries just don‘t like them.

PREJEAN: Well...

MATTHEWS: Is the quality of defense is also the problem? They just don‘t have decent lawyers?


PREJEAN: Chris, that‘s the key structural problem about why we can‘t fix the death penalty; 117 wrongly convicted people have walked off of death row because they got saved by college students. But our state like Louisiana, our legislature is never going to put money in there to get a good defense. You don‘t have a good defense, you dope have adversarial system of truth to get both sides.

MATTHEWS: Right.

PREJEAN: And that‘s why there are so many wrong decisions.

MATTHEWS: Are you saying, in Louisiana, they believe, where there‘s smoke, there‘s fire? If you‘re a defendant, you‘re probably guilty, so what the hell?

PREJEAN: Yes, right.

MATTHEWS: Is that the attitude? Is that the attitude?

PREJEAN: Yes, absolutely it is. And people get political points for being strong about the death penalty, if they‘re prosecuted. We even have awards in Louisiana. This is an attaboy behind-the-scenes thing called the Louisiana prick award. You get this plaque you hang in your office. It shows the state bird, the pelican flying with hypodermic needles in its talons. And that means you got a death penalty. And they give those awards behind the scenes to each other. And then they run for judge after they‘ve done...


MATTHEWS: But what about the other end? What about some liberal ACLU lawyer that gets somebody off on a technicality and they go out and kill somebody else? How do they feel? Shouldn‘t they feel responsible for the second murder?

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Shouldn‘t they? Let‘s be fair here.

PREJEAN: Hold on. But there‘s more technicality if you‘re talking about constitutional protections that people are supposed to have. That‘s what this book brings out, the constitutional protection like Dobie Williams, the first story.

MATTHEWS: OK.

PREJEAN: Black man on trial for supposedly killing a white woman, all white jury. And every court in the land said he had an impartial jury of his peers. What happened to that?

MATTHEWS: How did he get stuck with an all-white jury if he‘s an African-American defendant?

PREJEAN: Ah, that‘s very good. You got to read the book on that one and see what happens.

MATTHEWS: Do you find a racial peace in this, an ethnic piece in this?

PREJEAN: Big time.

MATTHEWS: Where black defendants have it tougher? How so? What do you find?

PREJEAN: Big time. First of all, in the selectivity we were talking about about the death penalty, overwhelmingly, eight out of 10 people siting on death row from California to wherever is because they kill white people. When people of color are killed in this country, it barely is a blip on the radar screen. Very seldom is the death penalty pursued for the death of people of color. What does that say to us?

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