Booth One - Celebrating Culture And Conversation

An Exclusive Interview with Sister Helen Prejean is the Topic of our Booth One Podcast this Week. Sister Helen is in town in support of the Quality of Mercy Project, a three-month public programming initiative examining the complex issues that arise from the production of Dead Man Walking: forgiveness, compassion, the death penalty, mass incarceration, racial inequality, and social injustice. We are pleased she agreed to spend some time talking to us in our studio. Read more here. Sister Helen Prejean (born in Baton Rouge, LA) is a Roman Catholic nun, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph and a leading American advocate for the abolition of the death penalty. Her efforts began in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1982 a friend asked her to correspond with convicted murderer Elmo Patrick Sonnier, located in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Sonnier was sentenced to death by electrocution. She visited Sonnier in prison and agreed to be his spiritual adviser in the months leading up to his execution. The expe