Dead Man Walking Politics Quotes

Can you be nonpolitical? Prejean says nope. If you do nothing, then you're on the side of the status quo. You can try to duck politics, but politics will find you, one way or the other. Prejean is big on reminding people about personal responsibility: it's so easy to turn our backs on problems that don't seem to directly involve us, but as Prejean points out, we're personally involved in just about everything on some level. Nonaction is still action.

Edwin Edwards had been governor from 1972-1980. He then lost an election, but he returned to office in 1984. Pat Sonnier was the first death penalty case in his new term. Millard Farmer hopes he won't want to execute, for moral reasons—but as it turns out, at least on this issue, Edwin Edwards has no particular moral compass to speak of, and his main goal is to avoid having to pardon anyone. That's politics.

The governor doesn't want to be guilty of killing someone. So he just says "the law does it." The political process here (and not just here) seems designed not so much to make decisions as to make sure that no one has to take responsibility for making decisions. But Prejean thinks that this escape clause is artificial one: it may be legal, but it's not moral.

The Pardon Board is supposed to ensure that justice is done and that no one is executed unjustly. Instead, they just rubber-stamp executions so that the governor doesn't have to pardon anyone, which might be politically unpopular. Being a "team player" here means betraying the public trust in order to gain political advantage. The problem is that people on Death Row have little political pull, so there's no political benefit to pardoning someone, even if that person's trial has been unfair. So politicians look for excuses not to do it. The political system is not well set up to aid the powerless. No politician wants to look "soft on crime."

Prejean's sister waited in the car during Pat's execution, and SWAT team members would grab their rifles every time she got out of the car to stretch. Executions, she's suggesting, affect politics more broadly: a country where people are executed is a country that is going to put a lot of money into an execution. Following this logic, a country where the police can kill you is going to start to look like—and even become—a police state.

Advocating for poor people, Prejean realizes, is innately political. Trying to give a voice to the powerless is going to create political pushback from the powerful. So, if this book inspires you to work for change, in any way, Prejean is telling you that you're going to have to start watching your back. It's a lot harder to be a good guy than a bad guy, unfortunately.

According to Prejean, the political system decides who matters and who doesn't. Folks with power and money matter—they can pay lawyers and politicians to make sure they matter. Other people can't buy lawyers and politicians, and so they're disposable.

Robert was given the death penalty in large part because the D.A. wanted to make a show of giving someone the death penalty in order to show he was tough on crime. Robert knows this and wants to tell the Pardon Board about it so that they'll consider it and possibly commute his sentence. But his lawyer knows the Pardon Board will just get cranky if they're told that there's politics involved. It's not made exactly clear why they'd be upset… but maybe it's because, as we learn, the Pardon Board itself is corrupt: it takes political bribes. The people don't want to hear how politics distorts the system—because that would hit a little too close to home.

Marsellus explains that the Pardon Board never pardons anyone, because the governor worries it will look bad for him if he commutes a sentence. In fact, the governor even seems to have knowingly executed a probably innocent man rather than face the fallout of commuting a sentence. Well, well: it turns out that a man's life is less important than possible (not even certain, but possible) harm to the governor's electoral chances. That's politics.

Prejean believes that televising executions would have a political effect: it would change people's minds about executions. After all, we all know that people are executed with some frequency in the United States—but how many of us actually know what that looks like? How many of us would actually flip the switch? How many of us would actually be okay with watching someone get put to death? Prejean thinks that part of the problem is the distance we put (or that the system puts) between us and the actual act of execution. If we're going to support the death penalty, Prejean argues, then we really have an obligation to understand fully what that means.