Helen Prejean - People Quotes

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I don't see capital punishment as a peripheral issue about some criminals at the edge of society that people want to execute. I see the death penalty connected to the three deepest wounds of our society: racism, poverty, and violence.

Helen Prejean
It didn't take long to see that for poor people, especially poor black people, there was a greased track to prison and death row. As one Mama in St. Thomas put it: "Our boys leave here in a police car or a hearse."

Helen Prejean
There's a lot of what I call "biblical quarterbacking" going on in death-penalty debates: people toss in quotes from the Bible to back up what they've already decided anyway. People want to not only practice vengeance but also have God agree with them.

Helen Prejean
The death penalty is firmly in place, but people are beginning to ask, "If this is supposed to be the solution, how come we're not feeling any better? How come none of us feels safer?"

Helen Prejean
I tell myself that I had simply better accept the fact that the death penalty is here to stay in our society, at least for a while, and there is nothing I can do about it. Maybe, in time — after how many executions? — people will come to realize the futility of randomly selecting a few people to die each year.

Helen Prejean
I tell people to go back to the gospel. Look at who Jesus hung out with: lepers, prostitutes, thieves — the throwaways of his day. If we call ourselves Jesus' disciples, we too have to keep ministering to the marginated, the throwaways, the lepers of today. And there are no more marginated, thrown-away, and leprous people in our society than death-row inmates.

Helen Prejean
Later that year I finally got it. I began to realize that my spiritual life had been too ethereal, too disconnected. To follow Jesus and to be close to Jesus meant that I needed to seek out the company of poor and struggling people.

Helen Prejean