Dead Man Walking, an autobiographical account of her relationship with Sonnier and other inmates on death row, served as the basis for a feature film, an opera, and a play. In the film, she was portrayed by Susan Sarandon, who won an Academy Award. Although Prejean herself was uncredited, she made a minor cameo as a woman in a candlelit vigil scene outside Louisiana State Penitentiary.
In addition to Sonnier, the account is based on the inmate Robert Lee Willie who, with his friend Joseph Jesse Vaccaro, raped and killed 18-year-old Faith Hathaway on May 28, 1980, eight days later kidnapping a Madisonville couple from along side the Tchefuncte River in Louisiana and driving them to Alabama. They raped the 16-year-old girl, Debbie Morris (née Cuevas), who would later become the author of her book Forgiving the Dead Man Walking and then stabbed and shot her boyfriend, 20-year-old Mark Brewster, leaving him tied to a tree paralyzed from the waist down.
In February, 2011, Prejean donated all of her archival papers to DePaul University.
Read more about this topic: Helen Prejean
Famous quotes containing the word man:
“The moment the doctrine of the immortality is separately taught, man is already fallen. In the flowing of love, in the adoration of humility, there is no question of continuance. No inspired man ever asks this question, or condescends to these evidences. For the soul is true to itself, and the man in whom it is shed abroad cannot wander from the present, which is infinite, to a future which would be finite.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)