It was there that she naively agreed to be a penpal to a man on Death Row. When he asked her to visit him, she went and visited.Her eyes were opened to the process whereby the state executes the condemned, which she abhors as cruel and unfair. She had to tell her story to anyone who would hear. "Witnessing his death (April 5, 1984) was a second Baptism," she wrote.
Along the way she encountered the devastated, families of murder victims. They called her to task for caring more about the murderers than about the victims' families. She used her organizing skills to found "Survive," a victims' family support group in New Orleans.
When Sister Helen wrote her life experiences into a book, she could scarcely imagine that it would be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and become the basis for a major motion picture. But Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States became number one on the New York Times Best Seller List for a significant number of weeks, and it has been translated into several languages. "Dead Man Walking," the film, was nominated for Oscars in four categories. Susan Sarandon won the Oscar for the best actress.