In Sister Helen Prejean’s 1993 memoir, Dead Man Walking, she tells the story of accompanying two men to execution in Angola’s death chamber, Elmo Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie.
When Tim Robbins adapted the book for the screen, he created a composite of those two men, a character named Matthew Poncelet. Terrence McNally and Jake Heggie used this same storytelling device in the opera of Dead Man Walking, conflating the two condemned men, this time in the character of Joseph De Rocher.
Our narrative arc
Graphic Dead Man Walking follows the original book more closely by telling the full story of Sister Helen’s experience with both Patrick Sonnier and Robert Willie. We decided to do this because the accounts of the two prisoners offer different insights into human dignity, criminal justice, contrition, compassion, and the pain of victims’ families.
There is integrity in telling the true story instead of fictionalizing a central character, especially when speaking to a young audience for whom much of this is ‘ancient’ history. Also, in remaining true to the events as they happened, we honor all those who were touched by them, including the victims’ families, some of whom are still living.
Accompanying Patrick Sonnier
Graphic Dead Man Walking takes us on a journey. We accompany Sister Helen as she moves from her sheltered and privileged life into the Projects of New Orleans.
While working in the Projects she is invited to write to a man on death row. This simple act plunges her, and the reader, into horrors, to emerge with—perhaps—some compassion and understanding for the man who has inflicted those horrors on a pair of teenage sweethearts and their families.
We also emerge with an understanding of the brutality and the human costs of executions. We see the execution chamber, a place largely shielded from public scrutiny. We hear from those who take part in the executions and how so many of them absolve themselves from responsibility.
Accompanying Robert Lee Willie
Then we are asked to go to a deeper, darker place, where compassion is harder to summon and where the pain and isolation of the victims’ families is foremost. Robert Lee Willie, the second murderer counseled by Sister Helen, has almost no contrition and is riddled with vicious prejudices. After hearing his story, where do we stand? Can we be both for the victims and against the death penalty?
The hero of the story
Finally, we hear from Lloyd LeBlanc, whose son, David, was one of those murdered by Patrick Sonnier. Lloyd has forgiven the men who “ended the LeBlanc family name”. He has reached out in kindness to Sonnier’s mother, who is reviled and isolated.
Lloyd LeBlanc’s capacity for compassion challenges us to reflect: might this be a truer path to healing than revenge and retribution?
The Owracle
Although in this retelling we have chosen to remain as faithful as possible to Sr. Helen’s original work, we also wanted the book to be relevant to its 21st century readership. Since the early 1990s when the book was first published, the criminal justice landscape has changed in many ways. It has also resisted change in significant ways. How could we show this evolution?
We decided to introduce a marginal character, an owl—dubbed The Owracle—who provides context and what we call “future history” at key points in the narrative.