Debbie Morris

This was written by, or on behalf of, Debbie Morris, one of the victims of Robert Willie, a death row inmate supported by Sister Helen Prejean, as recounted in her book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account Of The Death Penalty In The United States. As such, I think anyone interested in Prejean's work will want to read it, and I recommend reading Michael Varnado's Victims of Dead Man Walking (also issued as Losing Faith) and Dead Family Walking: The Bourque Family Story of Dead Man Walking by D.D. Devinci for other points of view.

I read this book when it first came out, and I have pondered it for all the years since. As an account of enduring and surviving a grotesque crime, this is a very moving account. As a comment about dealing with such issues, I found it unsatisfying.

The first problem is the ambiguities of the relationship between Morris and Prejean. Let me say that I have considerable admiration for Prejean, certainly more than for most people on her side of the death issue. At least she doesn't dismiss the victims as irrelevant. This story is told as a memoir, so Morris attempts to recount her feelings at the time, which are not necessarily how she feels looking backward. Before she met Prejean, Morris tells us that she was extremely critical of her for accepting without question what Robert Willie told her. Her anger was quite justified. It wouldn't have been difficult for Prejean to find other accounts. But now that Morris and Prejean are such great friends, does this criticism still stand? Further, it becomes clear that Prejean has no qualms about lying through her teeth to further her claims. She said in her interviews prior to Willie's execution that he was remorseful, a changed man. Willie contradicted her in his own interviews. She admits to Morris that Willie wasn't, and probably wasn't capable of being remorseful. Neither she nor Morris seem to have dealt with this untruthfulness.

I am bewildered by Morris' remarks about forgiveness. Many people who write on the issue of forgiveness have the odd idea that if one hasn't forgiven someone, one thinks of them obsessively, eaten up with anger. I had a friend who was murdered; I certainly haven't forgiven the murderer. He received a sentence that satisfies my sense of justice and I have almost forgotten him. I often think lovingly of my friend, but the only time that I think of him is when someone brings up this forgiveness issue. One of the proponents of forgiveness insisted that I must have forgiven him in some sense, but I insisted that I am the arbiter of my own feelings - he is not forgiven one whit. Forgiveness can be just as active and require as much energy as anger.

I'm glad that Morris has learned to cope with what happened to her, but I don't understand it as forgiveness. If she had forgiven him before the trial, would she have refused to testify? If it doesn't affect the course of the law, then what does it mean? Salvation is between the individual soul and God, so that is no explanation either. These are familiar platitudes, which people throw out so unthinkingly, confident that they are self evident, that when they are challenged to explain, they often cannot.

Personally, I recommend Forgiving and Not Forgiving:: Why Sometimes It's Better Not to Forgive by Jeanne Safer as a nuanced look at anger and forgiveness.… (mais)