Cougar wins 3rd in national contest

Cougar News Services

Sister Helen Prejean, a Louisiana Catholic nun who devotes her energies to educating the public about the death penalty, will give a speech Saturday at UH-Downtown.

Prejean's speech, "Dead Man Walking: The Journey," will deal with her experiences of working with death-row inmates in the past 20 years.

Her talk parallels the experiences she included in her 1993 book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. The book, which was on The New York Times Best Seller List for 31 weeks, was translated into seven languages and became the basis of a 1996 Tim Robbins film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. Sarandon's portrayal of Prejean in the film won her an Oscar for Best Actress.

Prejean's work with residents of the inner-city St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans in 1981 led her to a prison ministry, where she counseled death-row inmates in the Louisiana State Penitentiary.

Prejean continues to minister to death-row inmates and the families of murder victims. She is also working on a book about women's struggle for equality in the Roman Catholic Church, which will be published by Random House.

Her appearance at UH-D is sponsored by the Association for Women Journalists, the UH-D Women's Month magazine and Brigid's Place Inc., a women's empowerment center.

Prejean will speak at 5 p.m. Saturday in the UH-D Wilhelmina Cullen Robertson Auditorium, One Main Street. Admission is free and open to the public.