One day in 1982 the Prison Coalition of Louisiana asked Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun who lived and worked among the poor of New Orleans, to correspond with a death-row inmate-- a convicted killer of two teenagers. As she got to know Patrick Sonnier and to measure his fear, remorse, and humanity, her aversion to capital punishment-- an integral part of her faith and philosophy-- developed into a conviction that it can, and must, be abolished. In Dead Man Walking, the chronicle of her personal experiences with death-row inmates, Prejean introduces us not only to the prisoners themselves but to the grieving, furious families of their victims; to the people who administer the sentence of death; to the inefficient legal system; and to the expedient, occasionally capricious political choices that determine whether a prisoner will live or die. Dead Man Walking is an extraordinary and thought-provoking book that makes us reexamine some of our most fundamental beliefs.