Read Online Dead Man Walking by Helen Prejean - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Helen Prejean
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shouldn’t have let us get mixed up in the bad things we was doing.”
He has his head down. The cigarette hangs limp between his fingers. The smoke comes up in a thin, curling line. It is very quiet.
“I read the articles about it at the Prison Coalition office,” I say. “Those poor children. Those poor parents. They must be in hell.”
“I will go to my grave feeling bad about those kids,” he says. “Every night when they dim the lights on the tier I kneel by my bunk and pray for those kids and their parents. Nobody was supposed to get killed.”
His voice is barely audible.
Later, one of the trusties [trustees], who served meals on death row, will tell me that he never saw anyone with more remorse than Patrick Sonnier. “The guy wouldn’t eat when he first got here. He didn’t sleep much. The guy was eaten up by what he did.”
Later, I will find out that after his arrest, while in the parish jail, he had attempted suicide by slitting his wrists.
But now I just look at him. I’m not sure how to measure his sincerity. I see the young people getting down on their knees and lying down in the cold wet grass. Even if he didn’t do the shooting, he participated in the kidnappings — not just this couple. There had been others.
The silence is heavy. And then he says with anger in his eyes, “I didn’t rape Loretta. I never touched her.”
He had confessed to the murders, he tells me, because it was their plan, his and Eddie’s — each would say he did it and the authorities wouldn’t know who had done it, and he was afraid of the police. Two of the police officers had taken him into an office, his hands cuffed behind his back, and one of them had taken off his jacket, revealing a holstered gun. He was afraid that they were going to pistol-whip him with the gun. He figured that he could do the time at Angola, he said. He had served time when he and his cousin had stolen a truck. “In the confession I said I killed the kids because they might identify me and I didn’t want to go back to Angola, but I had done good at Angola, and I could do it again.”
The murders and the arrest had happened in 1977, he tells me, shortly after the reinstatement of the death penalty by the Supreme Court, but he had not “kept up too good with the news. If I had known then I could get the chair, no matter what they did to me, I would never have confessed.”
He tells me these things all in a flow, all at once, no break in the words, his eyes down most of the time or looking past me to a place I cannot see. He seems to accept that he is responsible for what had happened, even though he claims not to have killed the teenagers. He does not press his innocence. Nor does he seem to harbor any bitterness toward his brother. A week before his execution he will face off with the warden over his right to visit with his brother before he dies.
I remember the old chaplain’s words: “These people are the scum of the earth, and they’ll try to con you.”
I simply do not know what to make of what he is telling me. I suspend judgment. With the electric chair waiting, with death closelike this, who the triggerman was seems not the point. Two people are dead, and soon three people will be dead. That for now is the only point.
It is 3:00 P.M . — thirty-six hours away from execution. The guard comes in and tells me visiting time is up. No call has come from the Coalition office. I tell Pat I am going to Baton Rouge to my mother’s house (about an hour’s drive from the prison). If he does not get a stay I will come back to the death house to be with him. I brace myself inside.
About fifteen miles from the prison I hear on the car radio that he has been granted a stay pending a review of his petition by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
I try to comprehend the meaning behind the words. He will live. He will not die. He will be served his supper on the tier with all the others. The trays will come and one will be for him.
He has his head down. The cigarette hangs limp between his fingers. The smoke comes up in a thin, curling line. It is very quiet.
“I read the articles about it at the Prison Coalition office,” I say. “Those poor children. Those poor parents. They must be in hell.”
“I will go to my grave feeling bad about those kids,” he says. “Every night when they dim the lights on the tier I kneel by my bunk and pray for those kids and their parents. Nobody was supposed to get killed.”
His voice is barely audible.
Later, one of the trusties [trustees], who served meals on death row, will tell me that he never saw anyone with more remorse than Patrick Sonnier. “The guy wouldn’t eat when he first got here. He didn’t sleep much. The guy was eaten up by what he did.”
Later, I will find out that after his arrest, while in the parish jail, he had attempted suicide by slitting his wrists.
But now I just look at him. I’m not sure how to measure his sincerity. I see the young people getting down on their knees and lying down in the cold wet grass. Even if he didn’t do the shooting, he participated in the kidnappings — not just this couple. There had been others.
The silence is heavy. And then he says with anger in his eyes, “I didn’t rape Loretta. I never touched her.”
He had confessed to the murders, he tells me, because it was their plan, his and Eddie’s — each would say he did it and the authorities wouldn’t know who had done it, and he was afraid of the police. Two of the police officers had taken him into an office, his hands cuffed behind his back, and one of them had taken off his jacket, revealing a holstered gun. He was afraid that they were going to pistol-whip him with the gun. He figured that he could do the time at Angola, he said. He had served time when he and his cousin had stolen a truck. “In the confession I said I killed the kids because they might identify me and I didn’t want to go back to Angola, but I had done good at Angola, and I could do it again.”
The murders and the arrest had happened in 1977, he tells me, shortly after the reinstatement of the death penalty by the Supreme Court, but he had not “kept up too good with the news. If I had known then I could get the chair, no matter what they did to me, I would never have confessed.”
He tells me these things all in a flow, all at once, no break in the words, his eyes down most of the time or looking past me to a place I cannot see. He seems to accept that he is responsible for what had happened, even though he claims not to have killed the teenagers. He does not press his innocence. Nor does he seem to harbor any bitterness toward his brother. A week before his execution he will face off with the warden over his right to visit with his brother before he dies.
I remember the old chaplain’s words: “These people are the scum of the earth, and they’ll try to con you.”
I simply do not know what to make of what he is telling me. I suspend judgment. With the electric chair waiting, with death closelike this, who the triggerman was seems not the point. Two people are dead, and soon three people will be dead. That for now is the only point.
It is 3:00 P.M . — thirty-six hours away from execution. The guard comes in and tells me visiting time is up. No call has come from the Coalition office. I tell Pat I am going to Baton Rouge to my mother’s house (about an hour’s drive from the prison). If he does not get a stay I will come back to the death house to be with him. I brace myself inside.
About fifteen miles from the prison I hear on the car radio that he has been granted a stay pending a review of his petition by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
I try to comprehend the meaning behind the words. He will live. He will not die. He will be served his supper on the tier with all the others. The trays will come and one will be for him.
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