Helen Prejean, one of the main characters of the film, lives in New Orleans in one of the black neighbourhoods. She is a middle-aged woman who has chosen to live as a nun in order to help other people, especially poor black people. When she was a child they had black servants in her home. They slept in a small house next to theirs and they only ate in the kitchen. The first time she really thought about doing something was when she saw a white bus driver shouting at a young black woman and afterwards kicking her out of the bus.
One day she gets a letter from an inmate named Matthew Poncelet who is sitting on the death row in the L.A. prison because him and another man abused and killed a young boy and a young girl. He wrote to Helen because he wants to have some company and because maybe she could help him accept that this is how his life is going to end. Helen gets a bit surprised when she receives the letter since she has never done something like this before but decides to meet with him anyway
Helen visits Matthew more and more often and after a while they become quite close to each other. He is a man about 30 years of age and he has been on the death row for more than seven years. At first Matthew is a bit rejecting but as Helen comes closer to him he begins to open up. Helen tries to find out what happened in the woods where the young couple was murdered. Matthew says that he didn’t murder them and that it was his “partner” Carl Vitello who killed the young couple. Carl was sentenced to life which just shows that it doesn’t really matter what you have done. In the end it all comes down to whether you have a good lawyer or not.
Det er gratis at oprette en konto