When I give talks and when I talk in law schools and people come up and get the book and I'll write in it. Alright to one of the future Heroes of our society. I know sometimes lawyers get a bad rap and maybe some of them deserve it but most of the lawyers I have met are my heroes when I met Millard form. I didn't know people stayed up all night for weeks at a time working on cases to try to save lives. I didn't know that they were people as far away as in Minnesota who would volunteer and take a case to try to save people's lives. I just didn't know that hold networking fabric of human care and love and passion for justice existed and My Story begins simply people ask me a lot of times with how did you a Catholic nun get involved with with with death row inmates?And if if I know I'm kind of well, I make a little joke. I call it while I say. Well I got involved with the poor and this is the upward mobility of the Gospel of Jesus. I mean look at who Jesus hung out with and this is pure upward Mobility. Okay, but the simple and direct answer is because I did get involved with the four and as we all know of the over 2,800 people now who inhabit death row across this country all of them virtually a poor people and for me, it happened because our sisters and this is true among Many religious women in the Catholic Church heard the call of Vatican II to to modernize and get involved with the needs of people in that led us to to get involved with social justice and poor people and that led me on June 1st, 1981 Dr. A little brown Toyota truck into the st. Thomas housing project in all black Ender City housing project in New Orleans.And just to show you I lived in New Orleans since 1957 when I joined the sisters, but this was like going to another country we have in fact different countries within our cities and within this country and unless somebody builds a bridge to go across to wear these people are you can live your whole life and never cross those bridges. I was just reading a statistic the other day that 86% of white people in this country live in neighborhoods where there are less than 1% of black people. You know, there were it was an article talking about Brown versus the Board of Education and how segregation is just as much a problem in education today and even more so than it was in 1954 when Brown V versus the Board of Education and I was an example of that was when I joined the sisters, you know, I worked with, you know within the white suburbs and it's not to say some people need to be work with and some people don't all these people I've ever worked with I taught in the procure School taught 7Make the grade which is about as close as you can come to being in a room full of alka seltzers. I'm in 7th and 8th graders have all this tremendous energy. And I love that. I love being the director of religious ed, but I was never in direct touch with the poor now you they will pull people I pray for poor people when it was Thanksgiving time. I get my little canned goods like everybody else, you know to give to the poor to be charitable to the pool, but I didn't yet know about Justice to the poor in the struggle for justice and that change for me because our sisters in 1980 had a conference a three-day conference to talk about what direction would we take his religious women for the future and sister Marie Augusta Neal. Who's the school sister of Notre Dame?And a sociologist talk to us and it changed my life. Sometimes they are axial shifts in our understanding for me. It happened because she said the line Jesus preach good news to the poor and I'm thinking yeah, I know that. Yeah, I know that I read the gospels hundreds and thousands of times but then she said but integral to the good news that Jesus preached to the poor was that they would be poor no longer wear the whole component for the first time for me is that you can't preach empty stuff to people about how God loves them. If you're not shouldering their burdens to work for justice and I changed and it led me to drive that little brown Toyota truck the next year into the st. Thomas housing project where I began working with people at an adult learning center people were dropped out of high school and we're coming back to get their GED such a long tortuous process. And while I was working there one day in a casual conversation. A friend of mine who was working in the Louisiana Coalition on jails and prisons clipboard names of death row inmates anybody. He was meeting that day. He said hey you want to be a penpal to a death row inmate you want to be and he met me how much about this guy figured. He was probably guilty knew he had done something terrible, but I knew one thing for sure before even meeting him was that he was poor and I was here to serve the poor and so why not I could write a few letters. I thought that's all it would be. I thought I'd write him letters. He'd write me back. And I never dreamed it. When when did it unfolded? He had no one to come and see him and I found out soon enough. That was par for the course of the over 5,000 minute Angola prison in Louisiana half of them have never received one visit or one letter from anybody. You know, we have our own kind of devils islands and places of Exile with our prisons. They usually in 4 out of the way places. And so we have an effective way of isolating and exiling people the impact case his mother who had been Shattered by the crime and bye-bye her many things that has happened in her life in many ways. She was an abused woman couldn't bring herself to go through those prison Gates and go to that part of the prison where the red block letter said death row where her son sat waiting to be killed by the state of Louisiana. She couldn't get herself to do it. She would fall apart. And so it unfolded that he had nobody to see him to visit him and I'm reading the gospels which I've been re-reading all my life and the other words were Matthew 5 hours in prison, and he came to me right that stuck in with I was hungry and you gave me to eat I was a stranger and you took me and I was naked and you clothed me one great thing about getting involved with Justice and poor people as you start to get do it to do all those things you've been reading about and idealizing for you. Yeah. Well poor really means poor in spirit naked really means Nathan spiritas, but the get down to where the real physical stuff is with people do it to do it with them. So I was in prison and he came to be there with the words. There was Amanda next thing. I knew I was driving to little Toyota car down the highway that was to become very very very familiar to me. I didn't know it at the time. I feel God gives us a little bitty flashlight and you only see the little road right ahead of you. You know, it's not a Searchlight. You don't see the end and that was probably good cuz if I'd seen the in The road in that I was going to watch this man die in the electric chair probably would never have undertaken in the first place. And so I went to see him and what I do in Dead Man Walking his I take the reader with me because I know while this Fierce rhetoric about the death penalty. To use a southern expression people don't know pot squally about the death penalty. They really don't have any in her knowledge of what's going on in this how you know how very few people are selected in this Lottery. How costly it is how it's mostly only people that kill white people anyway how the status of the victim has everything to do with whether or not the death penalty is going to be thought we started a murder victim's group in New Orleans call survive and almost everybody in it is pouring black and most of them a mom has some of head of lost two sons as the DA's office in New Orleans prosecuted any of these cases and gone for the death penalty. Not only have they not gone for the death penalty and about 50 core women in the group, but they haven't even prosecuted the case is many of the perpetrators out on the street. None of the cases in the of the women in this group have even come to trial. You come to a fundamental thing in the death penalty is when is Rage about a victim felt? It depends on who the victim is when a victim of him quotes status is killed rage is felt in the ultimate punishment for assault winning quotes. Nobody is a killer who cares. It was the same way. I saw that they approach the drug problem in the same time as project where the sister's apartment was don't you just look out the window you could see the drug deals going on. I mean it was like loaves of bread the little white bags going up and down the street, you know right next to where we were in another apartment unit. But physician Department see right where the sisters were. We didn't knock on the door at night. I'm here for the bags and One Nights is the barber got up at 2:00. She was sleepy. She said right next door. I mean everybody knew right where it was. We said Barber that was a drug dealer you help with a drug that you said. I was sleep. You didn't know what I was doing. But when sister Lori Chef the head of Hope House went to see some top City officials like the drugs are open here. Do you know what they said if it was Sister, you know, what every city you going to have your problems with drugs, at least we know where they are and it's because it was poor black people in who cared let those drugs move over to the Garden District are two other place. Suddenly, you will see big announcements in the in the Times-Picayune. We got a drug problem and it's the same thing for victims and it's why the death penalty is never going to be applied across the board why it's never going to be fair. Amnesty International has amply document that whenever you turn over to governments the right to take life invariably they select minority groups in quotes the ugly people of their society that they that they come down on with the ultimate penalty. It will never be applied across the board and you know better than I those of you who've been working on these cases how the race Thing pans out in this but I've seen it close up the women in this group. They don't even they don't even have as a real gold that they'll get Justice out of the criminal justice. They know how it works. So I go to see this man because he has no one to see him the way it worked in, Louisiana. Before we started the legal office to to help people on death row was it a man would arrive out of the Parish jail Parish. We called counties parishes in Louisiana, and he would have two letters one contain the Warren of his execution in 6 weeks and the other would be a letter terminating him from his lawyer saying I have done with the law requires. I am now terminating with you. The very first thing we did after after Pat's execution was that we Farm the legal office because the Louisiana Coalition on jails and prisons whose job was to monitor. All of Louisiana prison was trying to represent death row inmates as well. And you can imagine you can just imagine how impossible that was. We started a legal office on $26,000 and Marcia Bloom who finished Northeastern and came and gave a year of a time working with Millard Farmer to get expert advice on the cases, and she said she would have to on an average do 20 phone calls to get an attorney. To take a case 20 phone calls to people around the country. She probably talk to some of you in this room. That's how we started the legal office and then also for Minnesota Judith menadue a Mennonite volunteer. We had her degree in law and a Ph.D. Also in Spanish came and she worked three years in the office and got it on his feet. Now. It's one of the federal Resource Centers in Millard how much money we need I said do you think could we do it like on $25,000? He said maybe 26 and then offer this lot offer this new lawyer whose like coming in to be in the Peace Corps in Louisiana that you could pay her $1,000 a month. We didn't do medical. We didn't do anything and Marcia Bloom and I'll sing her praises to this day because she came and put her hands on the Rope after just coming out of law school. And she and that's the kind of people when I say, I love lawyers. I think they're Heroes. Those are the kind of people. I've been meeting all along in this work. So I go and I take the reader with me when I go to death row to be there to be there as they playing the gates behind you to be there. As you read the intimidating sign of anyone going to visit in the Louisiana prison that you subject your body to a body search a dog sniffing a God knows what else I'm like, that's all I'm going to God, you know, maybe cuz I'm a nun in might cut me some slack and no I'm not bringing drugs, but I didn't you don't know it's like you have a feeling of stepping into a Terrain where you don't have control over your life. And that's just to visit. That's just a visit. I can't even imagine somebody hearing the the gates Klein behind them knowing they have 40 years or life in Louisiana. We have Draconian sentences for people over half of the over 5,000 people at Louisiana State Penitentiary Angola are they are practically are serving life sentences, they'll never walk out of that place and I take the reader with me. I take the reader with me then as we go then the guards plank the all the Lights behind me and then we come to death row there when they locked me in a room and there when I hear Pat sonnier coming for the first time and hear the chains dragging across the floor cuz I never seen a human being chained before, you know, I'd seen animals change or animals in the zoo, but I never seen a human being Chained and then he was behind this heavy mesh screen. What are the first things he said to me? It just don't look directly at that screen too much cuz it Doesn't number on your eyes and give you a bad headache. So I'll be looking down sometimes but trying so hard to see him. Whenever we'd in the visits, we put our hands up against that mesh screen just to touch the tips of fingertips. And at this seminar the other day Lane Nelson was talking about that how many people Pat Sonia was never touched before he died? In fact the two people I described in the book Robert Willie and Pat Sonia that did not allow families to touch them and one of the last request the pat Sonia if they're leading him to his execution in his voice had become like a little child voice as he said this he said Warden, can I ask you one question can sister Helen touch my arm as we walk cuz he he been praying that God would hold his legs up as he walked to the chair. The dignity how how can the Supreme Court use words like that executing a person is not in contradiction to the basic human dignity of people. I simply do not understand that. I do not accept that and that that kind of euphemism and discussion goes on a lot about the death penalty with doing this with dignity. The way executions are performed what this whole thing with Donahue now wanting to televised execution. I believe we should I believe the more we need it because now it's all done behind secret. And so the abstractions can rain and the rhetoric can rain and words like we did this with dignity. We did this with solemnity. When people assemble for an execution and they say fried a bastard and they say all those things it does something to us because we we we can see we're descending to a level of barbarism. But do you know it has an honesty in it? They can scent the blood in the violence going on and they applauded. And I would rather deal with that because it's more honest than to deal with. Well, we we did Justice tonight. We did it with dignity and we did it song with and here is a person like Pat Sonia who in the last 3 days of his life didn't go to sleep. He tried not to sleep because when he would fall into sleep, he had no more control of his Consciousness and the same nightmare would come back that come in for him. They dragging him to the chair. He's yelling no know they're strapping him in and then he would wake up in a sweat and be unable to go to sleep for the rest of the night. Why can we not acknowledge in the Eighth Amendment when we say we will not subject a person to torture that mental torture is as real as physical thought. We said all this discussion about this kid Michael Fay and caning him probably going to make four million dollars each one of those licks he got. Anyway, I'm in that whole thing will never came people in this country will never do Blogging because the pain is evident. We disguise our pain in this culture. We had not good to deal with pain. We're not dealing good with dealing with death and that's why the victims families as I soon found out felt so abandoned by everybody who helps them process their paid at Angola the other day. In fact, there's a man on death row who did God awful crime like the worst you can imagine went into this place shot innocent black man, killed white people reloaded his gun shot again, and one of the people that he shot lived. And felt as his lawyer would say the victim is calling me to work out his rage and everything cuz he's got nobody else to talk to and we talked about my setting up one of the sisters to go and just go meet with this person who who has so much rage to work through because he was shot in it and he sustained a head wound and heat and he was partially paralyzed and he's never going to be the same again to endure that kind of violence but in our culture see what I found out from the victims families when I started going to their meetings today after the funeral everybody left us alone. Nobody came to see us if we try to bring up about a daughter people change the subject or they might even say something insensitive. Like will you really ought to be past that because we don't know how to accompany people through pain and to be present in pain, especially against a mystery. So deep is the death of someone which who knows how to handle this. I don't know how to hand. I felt like my feet my feet weren't touching the bottom in anything anymore in this once I got involved in this not only with the death row inmate but with the murder victim's family or trying to work through and there's something so metaphysically wrong when parents have children killed when children die before parents as something so metaphysically skewed about that and and who will accompany people through that and the end the talks. I'm giving around the country when I meet with churches. I just say, you know, I was meeting with the bishop Embrace both arms of the cross of Jesus. What is a death row inmate in the dignity that they have but the other is the murder victims families and their used in this political system. They're used to get the death penalty. And then there are banned like this man like the story of this one victim illustrate so much. Tell her that visited pet sonnier and I talked about his Humanity. I was so amazed at his face at that the way he looked and how he had combed his hair and we had on a clean shirt and how you taking a shower and how glad he was to see me? The humanist, you know your Justice Just struck with you can know that people have done the most god-awful things in the world, but that people are more than the worst thing we ever do in our lives all of us are more than the worst thing we ever do in our lives if we would have a secret way of mirroring on a screen the worst thing any of us ever did to anybody in my life and then to be told that is all you are. Yeah, but look up practice slope and helping some people down, Louisiana. All you are is what you did to try to categorize human beings is the worst thing only the worst thing we ever did how wrong that is. And chill with him. I got to know him Cajun guy from st. Martinville. And then I found out about the crime. I found out about 2 young teenager kids deprived of their lives on the night of November 4th 1977 alone and in great Terror this man that I have begun to visit and who my light whom I could see good qualities in it. So many ways the crime of that night when he and his brother Eddie out rabbit hunting come across these kids in a Lover's Lane after a football game on a Friday night. And abducted the kids said they were only going to scare the kids. They had done this with other teenagers before it had never led to a murder. But this night this night Loretta Bourque and David LeBlanc was found the next day lying face down each of them with three 22 caliber bullet holes in the back of their heads every parent's worst nightmare of their kids. And I must tell you. In Louisiana, I don't know if this but when the waters meet in the Gulf the shallow Waters meet the Deep Waters of the gulf and makes a line of foam along the top of the water called a Riptide and when I read the newspaper accounts of these kids and what had happened to them and that I had already begun to visit Pat Sonia and later his brother who had done this a kind of a Riptide formed in my soul because on the one hand, of course, I was horrified at this couldn't begin to condone. This couldn't help it asks. Why why I kill innocent kids. How did this happen? Why did you do this and that and the rage and the and that that you just feel in the presence of such an evil such an unexplainable evil. And then on the other side I'm weighing. Do I want the the state of Louisiana now to imitate this violence to Pat Sonia and I know deep down in my soul that I don't want them to do that that I believe that that's wrong, too. William Faulkner said The Only Thing Worth writing about is the conflict in the human heart. And that's the way I told the story a dead man walking with the conflicts and meeting the conflicts and being honest about the mistakes. I made mistakes. Like I made a mistake of not going to when I found out about the crime. I thought about going to see the victims families and then I thought God, you know, it's been 5 years and if they know I'm against the death penalty. Maybe that's going to get them or upset part of it was not knowing how to handle it. You know, when someone's in real deep pain, you would want to give him anything anything to ease their pain and then what if they said to me, so if you really understand us and what we going through then you want the death penalty to in on you Mara Lee. I couldn't give him that partly to was cowardice. It wasn't protecting anybody was like I was scared. They were going to be mad as hell at me and probably slam the door in my face and reject me a not so I avoided that. but then I talk about later meeting them meeting these victims meeting them in that the pardon Board hearing for pet Sonia the board family lauretta's family has never they have always been angry at me, but then meeting this incredible man, Lloyd LeBlanc Who said to me since the way you been deeply Catholic guy went to Catholic schools all his life. And now we hear the nun is been visitin the murder of his son. He said you mean you didn't talk very you mean all this time. You've been going to see him and made you did not come see us. You didn't come see me and you know me. I've been needing somebody to talk to I had nobody to talk to him this got it. I mean I still feel guilty about that because if I had been with Lloyd if I had visited him, I might have been able to steer him away because he ended up witnessing an execution. He really didn't want it to witness. All he wanted was an apology and hear the man gets railroaded down that track the other victims family badly wanted him to be there for the execution and all the stuff if there's a hero in this book, it's Lloyd LeBlanc Because in him I met a man who when he encountered his son when he actually nailed by his slain son. The only one who would have carried on his family because Lord and you were older than you they would never have another son. And he nailed and he had been taught the Our father from the time. He was a little boy and when he came to the part of the Our father that are the most difficult words in the Our Father to say forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us Lord of lost said the words and met him right there by the body of his son. I in the book with that because of course that kind of forgiveness is not something you do once but the spirit of this man not to let the rage in the hate overcome him and take his life away to forgiveness is often seen as a weakness or I forgive you which means it didn't matter some of the murder victims families who are against the death penalty televic Spirits is that when people hear that they are against the death penalty. They'll say to them. Oh, it's a shame. You didn't love your daughter the way we love our because the social code is if you really loved your child and you want what Society offers in the ultimate punishment, But not Lloyd LeBlanc at the end of strength of forgiveness is is that you don't give in to the raid so that it takes your life away as well. I tell two contrasting stories of victims families in this book Lloyd LeBrons won. The Harvey's are the other the second person that I was with who was executed was Robert Willie of kind of person Outlaw kind of guy had a swastika tattooed on his arm and on his chest when they raised up his shirt after the execution a naked woman on one side and the Grim Reaper of death on the other. I mean just one little story about him though. We need it done. Terrible crime. Okay was a murder of an 18 year old girl, and she had been raped and stabbed and put a few hours before he died. One of the last things they do in Louisiana as they put a white T-shirt on them. I mean, we don't send anybody the chair dirty, right? You got to clean white shirt. But the amazing thing about Robert Willie this tough guy was said he admired Hitler belong to a white Aryan group and all that and he's got like 2 hours to live and he comes out after they prepared his body shaved his head and all this kind of stuff and he was kind of going I'm a little embarrassed about these tattoos though. I don't want you to think the worst of me cuz of my tattoo August that he had done. You understand. I'm going to think worse of him because he's got some Tattoos On This home and all the tattoos are not a problem. I promise you that's it's all right to know. But anyway, so Robin Williams involved in the in the murder of another teenage girl Faith Hathaway in the and her parents her mother and her stepfather. They call their own press conference before the execution and burn Harvey said, I can't wait to see Robert Willie fry. I can't wait to see the Smoke by off his body and you know, I understood that that he was saying that that was his pain talking, you know and who of us if faced with this where somebody says here we got the person that murdered your daughter, what would you like us to do to him? We would tell him and graphic terms, but yet The illusory thing of what we offer victims families is after you watch this execution. Now, the promise is Justice will be done and you're going to feel a lot better after Robert Willie's execution. I was there the Harvey's were there on the front row, Louisiana laws for victims to be there. He came out in the Press was waiting. In fact that daughter Elizabeth was also there she was only 14 though in Louisiana Brew Alliance that note. I was a little young witness an execution but Life Magazine on a two-page spread caught a picture of her when the guard outside the gates of Angola announced that Robert Willie have been executed you see her like this cheering course, she was doing with her parents would doing you know it anyway until they came out and all the president got national press ABC World News Tonight and all this and they were there so they said Mr. Harvey you finally got to watch Robert Willie die. How do you feel now? And you know what he said? He said the SOB died too quick. I hope he burns in hell. And I realize here in Vernon say that none of the in these people have become my friends. Don't ask me how but we have become friends and I'll tell this story in here. I realize when he said that he could have watch Robert Willie died a thousand thousand times and it could never replace the personal universe that he had lost that it was an illusion and it was like drinking salt water when you're real thirsty that it had nothing to do with the reality and what he didn't see but who story also tell us about Robert Willie's mama and his family coming to see him in the death house before he died his ten-year-old brother Todd his face crumbling as he walked to the door when he told his brother. Goodbye for the last time his mother fainting when she saw his body in the coffin this other tragedy the Unseen victim's family in the death penalty is the family of the person who is executed who live under the stigma Pat Sonia's little girl Star had to change schools cuz the kids were saying, you know kids Your dad is a criminal your dad is going to get the electric chair like they saying Union in. Yeah, I mean, you know that children don't have any idea of the enormity of the kind of things that they say and one of the things that made Pat laugh before he was executed was when he did visit with star he said hey, I hear you had a chance to take ballet lessons. She said Daddy, I'm not taking ballet lessons. I'm taking karate move because the kid knew what she was up against but the whole story their families the Unseen story of families facing an execution what it does to the children what it does to the mothers what it does to everybody involved that's also part of the Mosaic and the story of this American Tragedy, which the death penalty is. It's Pat story unfolded and I began to hear what had happened in his case find me as as I began to get the matters of his case and how terrible his defense it then it was only after a volunteer attorney who didn't know what he was doing it taking his appeal and I sat and fifth circuit and saw the lawyer sweating profusely and even some members of the fifth circuit saying we'll miss the songs. I would have been helpful that I realize we're in deep trouble cuz I mean the 5th circuit as you know is not helpful and when they was saying to the lawyer would have been helpful. If you've done this this and this I need a guy didn't know what he was doing. And that's what led me to get on that phone. I had heard about this man Millard Farmer. Some people said, he's a little eccentric I didn't care who it was or what he was and it led me to call him and ask for his help which he did right away and began right away to to go and try to defend Pet's life and in time to save his life right down to the end. And I talked about being there and going through the whole thing of execution that all the way through this book. I educate people about the death penalty. I had a lot of miracles about this book. I call it a virgin birth book. It should never have happened. OK I never written a book before in my life. I didn't know anything about it and here I get hooked up with this Jewish editor at random house Jason Epstein who have never been within 10 ft of a Catholic nun. And he was a wonderful attitude. He's a managing editor random house. He's found out and in my first draft of the book, I put all the information down in the footnotes cuz I didn't want to like clutter the drama of the story and he said Helen Allen The Secret of writing stories you leave in information all along. So that is your reader follows the drama they get educated. So in the second draft I did that I pull threads up that have been buried. The footnote so by the time a person finishes this book they know about the death penalty. They know about costing about race. They know they know everything they need to know any reaction to this book has just been tremendous. I mean, I've had judges of head like to Louisiana does it have to tell you that they invited me to lunch. They had two books talked in that little briefcases. They don't want that little pears. Okay to see it. Right but we go to lunch one of a federal Magistrate Judge won a criminal court judge and it changed our minds on the death of people that read the book see what it does. Is it bring some clothes he was saying he really the one who gets to tell the story. When's the case? I was up at Notre Dame law school. And afterwards a group of us went to lunch from the law school and there was a woman there who teaches the lawyers how to write and she was just working on a paper and it seemed was the one who gets to tell the story when's the case and it tile to tell the whole human story which of course this whole day has been about and what you and what you're dealing with him. And so Jason help me, you know, there's no Lone Ranger in any of this business. We all our community and need each other in the same was true of the writing of the book. I have the editor of Good Housekeeping call me. She said sister want to finish reading the book. I wanted to call in the staff to say we have to do a major piece on this, but she said I couldn't call them in because I had been crying people cry when they read the books because they need real live human beings. They meet him in the victims and it puts a human face on death row inmates and there's something about are losing our soul in the United States to say that we Can execute people and we can kill people as long as we don't look at their face and this whole thing is so abstract and so removed from people and what public education is about what this book is about in the book is going to be a film Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins are going to do a film of this book. And so we going to have a chance to get to the American public and bring them through this experience of this book. And Jason up sign said we were talking about writing first writing first meeting ever had with it. He said because this is a personal story. It's going to help the American public get in touch with the ambivalence that many people feel on this issue and I have found that to be true. I divide the American public into three sections 20% of us already are against the death penalty and part of the Abolitionist Movement is to identify those allies and help them to become public 20% I categorize as you can have Moses spend two weeks with him on a desert island on Jeremiah or Jesus and at the end of it they going to say frying because they're showing the rage their pervious to anything but 60% the vast majority of the American poet really are not for the death penalty in the way. The poles have been asked us far as always a general question. Do you favor the death penalty for people who've committed first-degree murder? They've done polls now in Kansas, Nebraska New York where they asked them they presented with an alternative to the death penalty and it's amazing the result when people can be assured for example that even when somebody commits first-degree murder that they will serve a mandatory twenty-five years before they can be considered a parolee close to 50% And two-thirds of them reject the death penalty when they're offered as the alternative that a person would get life without parole and part of their labors would go to restitution for the victims families 2/3 of a reject the death penalty. So to say that the public supports the death penalty, you know is not really true. They supported in the abstract not in the concrete in the summer of 1987 after mccleskey came down and we had people all the gates were open. We executed eight people in 8 1/2 weeks in Louisiana, 1 week, we executed to people it had two effects won. The murder rate in New Orleans went up 16.3%. The most concrete affected had was for 2 and 1/2 years after that juries in Louisiana would not hand down the death penalty. It was only a trickle like instead of ten of year. It was something like one of year or 1 year to year. That's if that because of Brought it out of the abstract and it brought it down to the concrete and that's our task. That's my task. And then people like me who you're working with public education on the death penalty to get people to abolish it. And Jason epshteyn was right. Most people do in fact feel deeply ambivalent about the death penalty that go on the one hand we got to do something about this crime, but on the other hand what you just lift the rock up and just start looking at the ants underneath. There's a lot of ambivalence on this issue and Thurgood Marshall headed. So right he said it in Furman and he said it and Greg that public opinion about the death penalty, but it's not informed public opinion inform the public about the death penalty and they will reject it. And we have found whatever we are doing education with people that in fact that is the case one key piece of information. They're couple of key pieces of information though that the public needs one is is that first-degree murders and not going to be walking out on the streets after a few short years. There's just a popular conception that if we don't execute them, they going to be out in 7 years or 5 years in Louisiana. The magic number 7 years. I don't know where people get this but that's what they think and part of public education is to show them that in 47 out of 50 States now state legislators have dealt with this and have read form their sentencing code for first-degree murders that it's either really life-without-parole sentence has a mandatory long-term sentences for first-degree murder, California. Did this after Charles Manson 25 years ago life without parole for first-degree murder, not one person has walked out of that under that new sentencing Statute in California people need to know that people who commit first-degree murder or not going to walk out on the streets again after a few years. That's one of the things they need to know. Another key thing. They need to know is it's never going to be faring across-the-board cuz I'm done all these radio talk shows. Oh God when I get into the thing. First God said in Exodus when we get on the Bible. I know we're at we're in for an interesting little love thing. But the other one is invariably you have the person who calls and just get them all. Let's just get them all anybody commit murder knows that they going to get the death penalty and then you have to show why we never going to get them all in the whole history of this country. We've never in quotes got in the mall because the status of the victim has everything to do and politics and explain the great discretionary powers that Diaz have is to what the indictment all these thing, you know, I had to find out and then the third key thing is to talk to him about cost. Just the exorbitant cost is like building a couple of ICU units in the criminal justice system when everybody needs vaccinations and it doesn't take anybody with a PhD listening to this time to stand like in New Orleans on any given day. We have ten to twenty thousand truant kids for my public schools, maybe 30% of them have access to guns and to say to people not tell me what will really make you feel safer and be safer to execute a few people in this Lottery fashion at the cost of millions of dollars or the start intervening with these kids and people people know now there's a growing level of Consciousness that we got to start doing something about the kids and getting to be harder not as hard as it needs to be but it's getting to be hard for politicians to say. Yeah. The death penalty is an anti-crime measure and part of public education is to Mask that and say come on now don't tell me because you going to have the death penalty that you saying that this is an anti-crime as a show that is really a pro crime measure because you put in all the energy and resources into building this one ICU unit in the criminal justice system works with which the death penalty is. Meanwhile. All these kids are going to seed and the end and the help that's needed in drug prevention and education and job training and the intervention that we need to start doing with young people. So let me just say to you just that I love talking to people like you and being with people like you because you people who really make a difference very interesting way. I may be all in with this. I happen to be invited to the birthday party of Justice Brennan who was 88 Justice Brennan the interesting story his wife. You know now we talked about retired Justice Brennan, you know who's done so much. You note to stand up for abolition of the death penalty. Whose wife and how she could be married to him and be for the death penalty. I don't know but has believed in the death penalty. Will Justice Brennan size of a bad so she had to read him the book. She read my book. And I matter afterwards at this birthday party. She said I was always for the death penalty. I have to tell you that I honestly sister. She said that I'm very troubled by by some of the things he married him and I don't know what they talked about itself are. Okay, but but anyway anyway, so but at this birthday party for him, it was held at Georgetown and I was sitting at a table with a man who's in charge of ongoing continuing education for the lawyers at Georgetown. And I said what an interesting job. I said tell me what has been your greatest surprise in working and continuing education for Georgetown lawyers. He was trying to take them back if they don't nobody ever asked me a question what was surprised me and he said we don't know I know what it is and it is that so many of them are unhappy I said happy, why are they unhappy? And he said cuz they get tapped into this and they get tapped into the money and they get trapped into doing the job that really didn't think it was going to be. And then the money comes in and they like with the money gives them and they feel it's really hard to get out and unhappy. And then I thought isn't that something, you know, I meet lawyers who are working their tails off and not sleeping at nights and working, you know night and day to try to save people's lives. But but none of those I met what I have a call on happy and it reminds me of the story of an attorney. Who had a very inauspicious beginning because he was a young kid and he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. So we had a rich uncle said we'll send a kid to law school, which they did came out what's on fire with it. Let me say what an outstanding student in law school and fact took his first case. It was over a little bit of money. And he was so overcome with his own ineptitude that when he stood up to make the defense for his client. He was mute. He could move his lips. He stood up and he said nothing. And he sat back down and he was laughed out of the courtroom. And of course people weren't exactly knocking at his door to bring him cases after that. But then one day a man came who was very poor who had no one else in this lawyer. We talked about that. I have a terrible record. I'm a terrible attorney and it got there but you all I got you all I got and so this young attorney did the research on this case got into the case found out everything about it and he went in and he won the case and you all know who I'm talking about. This man was Gandhi. And the passion that began to spark his life was for justice because the poor man who came to him had no one and there was Injustice in the case, and we know what happened to Gandhi after that and I suspect that there are many Gandhi sitting in this room. We're not maybe Gandhi's with a capital G, but we're a little dondie's and we doing the same thing, and I applaud you for that you giving me the award, but I applaud you for your work and ask you to continue it and I thank you for it. Thank you.