Innocence isn't everything.

• Author: Cusac, Anne-Marie
• Position: The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions by Sister Helen Prejean - Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row by David R. Dow - Book Review

The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions By Sister Helen Prejean Random House. 310 pages. $25.95.

Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row By David R. Dow Beacon Press. 238 pages. $24.95.

It's hard not to love Sister Helen Prejean. This member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, who was basically unknown before 1993, spent two years composing Dead Man Walking. In her new book, she confesses that during this period of seclusion and daily writing, "I felt I wasn't doing real work like the other sisters, going out into their ministries each day." But when Random House released Dead Man Walking, the book climbed to the top of The New York Times bestseller list, received a nomination for a Pulitzer Prize, and led a breathy Susan Sarandon to portray Prejean in a film version of the book.

The combined popularity of the book and the movie heated up a debate on the death penalty that had been frozen for decades. "I didn't know a book could have such power," writes Prejean. Since that time, Prejean has been in demand as a speaker. She also seems to have influenced the Pope's historic change in the stance of the Catholic Church on capital punishment. She is an American reformer and religious hero in the tradition of Benjamin Rush, Dorothy Day, and Martin Luther King Jr.

In the twelve years since the publication of Dead Man Walking, the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the executions of retarded inmates and those who committed their crimes before the age of eighteen.

If Dead Man Walking started people talking, they certainly have not stopped. Northwestern University Professor David Protess and his team of journalism students helped to release men from the state of Illinois prison system, where they were serving time for crimes they did not commit. Among the released was Anthony Porter, who was due to be executed two days after he left his cell. In response to the uncertainties raised by the students and by a powerhouse investigative report in the Chicago Tribune that questioned the legitimacy of many more capital convictions in Illinois, departing Republican Governor George Ryan pardoned four and commuted the sentences of the remaining 167 people on death row.

The rise of DNA testing has also helped the abolitionist cause, as lawyers with the Innocence Project have proven beyond a doubt that our legal system sometimes incarcerates the wrong people. States are slowing the rate of executions, a phenomenon some attribute to the public's concerns that we may be executing people who did not commit the crimes we kill them for.

Prejean's new book responds to such distress, centering on her belief that she has witnessed the executions of two innocent men. "As in Dead Man Walking," she writes, "this is my eyewitness account of accompanying two men to execution--but with one huge difference: I believe that the two men I tell about here--Dobie Gillis Williams and Joseph Roger O'Dell--were innocent." This contrasts with her approach in Dead Man Walking, where she took the guilt of the criminal as her point of departure.

Unfortunately, Prejean places so much emphasis on the innocence of Williams and...