Dead Man Walking by Helen Prejean

Author:Helen Prejean
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Non-Fiction, Politics, Biography, Religion
ISBN: 9780307787699
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 1993-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

*A maximum-security federal prison in Illinois.

CHAPTER

7

Driving back to New Orleans after my visit with the Harveys, I stop and pay my dollar at the entrance of the twenty-six-mile causeway. Here at these toll booths is where Vernon Harvey said he spotted Robert Willie in a federal vehicle and began his high-speed chase. Night has taken hold of the sky and the lake. All I can see as I drive are the shafts of light from the headlights and red flicks of tailights in front of me. I can’t get my mind off Faith Hathaway.

She had been celebrating. No doubt the liquor had lowered her defenses. At what point did the chilling realization seize her that she was in danger, real danger, there in the front seat of a truck, wedged between two strangers — men, maybe with guns, whose remarks were becoming more and more sinister and who were taking her farther and farther away from the safe moorings of home and parents and friends — and help. As panic mounted, had she tried shutting her eyes tight, fighting to throw off the sluggish effects of the alcohol? It was a time when a woman needed her sharpest wits about her, a time to think clearly and keenly about escape. Or perhaps it was better that her wits were not so sharp. Better, maybe, for the anesthesia of the alcohol to dull the pain and horror soon to be hers.

Poor Vernon and Elizabeth. No matter that Faith was killed four years ago. Every time the terror is told, she suffers and cries out and dies again. She suffered alone and in great terror and no one was there to comfort her. Who can blame them for wanting to see her murderer executed? Maybe they feel that not to demand death, the harshest punishment possible, would be a betrayal of their daughter’s memory.

Great as the sea is thy sorrow.

I wonder what will ever be able to heal the Harveys’ pain and bring them peace. No, there is no replacing the unique universe of Faith Hathaway. Even if Robert Willie is destroyed, the aching void can never be filled.

I understand the Harveys’ desire for retribution. Their lives have been violated by Robert Willie and they want to see him punished. They want to see him made accountable for his actions. They want to see him pay for what he did. So do I. In an ideal world, there would be no need for retribution. But in real societies, punishing the guilty is as integral to the function of law as exonerating the innocent and preventing crime.

Susan Jacoby, in her insightful book Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge, says:

Establishment of … the restraint that enables people to live with one another and the ineradicable impulse to retaliate when harm is inflicted has always been one of the essential tasks of civilization. The attainment of such a balance depends in large measure on the confidence of the victimized that someone else will act on

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