Saturday, April 15, 2023

Sister Helen Prejean: Her Lies, Deceptions and/or Astounding Willful Ignorance? - A Compilation

Sister Helen Prejean: Her Lies, Deceptions and/or 
Astounding Willful Ignorance? - A Compilation

From: Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, Houston, Texas, CV at bottom

“Victims of Dead Men Walking”, by Detective Michael Varnado, in the Faith Hathaway rape/murder, a "Dead Man Walking" case, A very different picture of the killer and justice (1), concentrating on the victim and her survivors. (1).

From the Publisher:  "Dead Family Walking: The Bourque Family Story of Dead Man Walking", by D.D. de Vinci, 2006.
https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Family-Walking-Bourque-Story/dp/0977188108
 
"Dead Family Walking" reveals an explosive 1978 courtroom document that defies the ending of Sister Prejean's book (another Oprah guest) which potentially makes her use of the Lord's Prayer in her finale one of the most disrespectful profanations history will ever record, and certainly makes "Dead Man Walking" compete with James Frey's "Million Little Pieces" in their race towards deception."
 
"de Vinci wields your heart in the portrayal of a family's perpetual suffering resulting from a Catholic nun's (Prejean) prior relationship with an executed killer that inspired her exaggeration-filled book, "Dead Man Walking,", which the writer claims destroyed the lives of an American Family.
 
On November 5, 1977 the Bourque's teenage daughter, Loretta, was found murdered in a trash pile near the city of New Iberia, La, lying side-by-side near her boyfriend with three well-placed bullet holes behind each head.
 
"de Vinci's investigative research indicates that Prejean's book is not honest. (Dead Man Walking" murderer) Sonnier revealed shocking information about his relationship with Prejean that still stuns the New Iberia homicide detective to this day.
 
The Bourques got a raw deal from the Church and Prejean. They had to go through much pain and anguish. Sister Prejean has been using the Bourques for her anti-death penalty and got away with it!

2022 Does Truth Matter? Sr. Prejean, The Church & U of Notre Dame 
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2022/09/does-truth-matter-sr-prejean-church-and.html 
 
2016   Sister Helen Prejean: Does Truth Matter?

======

These two, just below, go together.  I entered two responses to Ford's October 24, 2014 at 2:07 pm post, which rebutted all of his reply, the first in 2014 and the second April 14, 2023 at 9:45 pm, neither have been posted, the later which I saved.
 
2014  Boston College -- Sr. Helen Prejean: More Problems & Full Rebuttal

2014 REBUTTAL To: "God Allows Us to Wake Up”: Sister Helen Prejean Comes to BC, By: Craig A. Ford, Jr., Graduate Students of Color Blog, 10/11/14,
http://bcgsca.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/god-allows-us-to-wake-up-sister-helen-prejean-comes-to-bc/

======
2014    Sr. Helen Prejean: "Botched" Nun
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2014/09/sr-helen-prejean-rebutted-again.html 
 
2014 Anti Victim: Anti-Death Penalty Movement
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2014/04/anti-victim-anti-death-penalty-movement.html
 
2013 Sister Helen Prejean: A Critical Review
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/04/sister-helen-prejean-critical-review.html
 
2013 The Woman Caught in Adultery, The Death Penalty & John 8:2-11
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-woman-caught-in-adultery-death.html
 
2009 Sister Helen Prejean & the death penalty: A Critical Review
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2022/09/sister-helen-prejean-death-penalty.html
 
2008 “God, ogre comparison doesn’t fly with interfaith crowd”, Paul A. Anthony, Rocky Mountain News, 03:35 p.m., August 24, 2008.
and the rebuttal from Pope Benedict
“It Is Not ‘Optional’ for Christians to Take Up the Cross”, 8/31/2008) 
https://zenit.org/articles/cross-not-optional-says-benedict-xvi/
 
2004 Death of Truth:  Sister Prejean's Book
The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions
 
If interested:
 
These review the most common discussions regarding religion and the death penalty
 
The Catholic Church & The Death Penalty
12 (14) Factual Errors: 2018 CCC 2267 amendment
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2022/02/7-factual-errors-2018-ccc-2267-amendment.html 
 
The Death Penalty: Mercy, Expiation, Redemption & Salvation
 
 
 
30 Examples:  How Death Penalty Abolitionists Value Murderers More Than Their Innocent Victims:
AKA - Full Rebuttal of Sir Richard Branson & His Death Penalty Comments
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2023/04/full-rebuttal-of-sir-richard-branson.html 

“Capital Punishment and Magisterial Authority”
"Fastiggi on Capital Punishment and the Change to the Catechism, 
Part I," Edward Feser, 8/26/2023,
Part 2, 8/30/2023

 
"Killing Equals Killing: The Amoral Confusion of Death Penalty Opponents"
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2023/03/killing-equals-killing-amoral-confusion.html 

"The Death Penalty: Neither Hatred nor Revenge"
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-death-penalty-neither-hatred-nor.html 

"The Death Penalty: Not a Human Rights Violation"
within
 
much more, here:
 
 

1) Research, w/sources, w/fact checking/vetting & critical thinking, as required of everyone in a public policy debate and which rebut all anti-death penalty claims.
 
The media/academic norm is to use anti-death penalty material, refuse to fact check or vet it and avoid all pro-death penalty research and experts. How will you know that is true? You haven't seen this material, prior.

The Death Penalty: Justice & Saving More Innocents
and
Students, Academics & Journalists: Death Penalty Research
(7 pro-death penalty experts listed)


600+ pro death penalty quotes from murder victim's families &
3300+ from some of the greatest thinkers in history
http://prodpquotes.info/ 
======

Partial CV
Posted by at

Friday, April 14, 2023

lethal = note

"There in an almost comical irony to these developments. These drug companies have never been bothered by the devastation these drugs have caused in those facing addiction and instead have focused on profits they earn from their destruction. Now, however, one death has leaped them into action (, the use of fentanyl in a Nebraska execution). Not because the damn has finally broken and the pharmaceutical companies have seen the error of their ways. No, the real issue in the pharmaceutical companies' is bad PR." Tim Zelina,  thenewpolitical.com, Opinion: ohio's Considered use of fentanyl in capital punishment is hauntingly ironic, aug 2018
Posted by at

Thursday, April 13, 2023

Death of Truth: Sister Prejean's Book The Death of Innocents

originally published 2004 (1), with later edits

Death of Truth:  Sister Prejean's Book
The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions

From: Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, Houston, Texas, CV at bottom

 Four articles   

(a) “FOR GOOD REASON, JOE O’DELL IS ON DEATH ROW” scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1995/vp950728/07210224.htm 

quote: “The DNA report commissioned by O’Dell and his lawyers actually corroborates O’Dell’s guilt. There is a three-probe DNA match indicating that the bloodstains on O’Dell’s clothing is indeed consistent with the victim Helen Schartner’s DNA as well as her blood type and enzyme factors.” 

“There is certainly no truth to O’Dell’s accusation that evidence was supressed or witnesses intimidated by the prosecution.”   

(b) “Sabine district attorney disputes author’s claims in book” www(DOT)shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050124/NEWS01/501240328/1060   

quote: “I don’t know whether she is deliberately trying to mislead the public or if she’s being mislead by others. But she’s wrong,” 
District Atty. Burkett, dburkett(AT)cp-tel.net   

(c)  Book Review: “Sister Prejean’s Lack of Credibility: 
Review of “The Death of Innocents”, by Thomas M. McKenna (New Oxford Review,  12/05). 
http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1205-mckenna   

“The book is moreover riddled with factual errors and misrepresentations.” 

“Williams had confessed to repeatedly stabbing his victim, Sonya Knippers.”   

“This DNA test was performed by an independent lab in Dallas, which concluded that there was a one in nearly four billion chance that the blood could have been someone’s other than Williams’s.”   

” . . . despite repeated claims that (Prejean) cares about crime victims, she  implies that the victim’s husband was a more likely suspect but was overlooked because the authorities wanted to convict a black man.”   

Truly foul.

” . . . a Federal District Court . . . stated that ‘the evidence against Williams was overwhelming.’  ” 

“The same court also did “not find any evidence of racial bias specific to this case.” 

 “(Prejean’s) broad brush strokes paint individual jurors, prosecutors, and judges with the term “racist” with no facts, no evidence, and, in most cases, without so much as having spoken with the people she accuses.”

Completely dishonorable.

“Sr. Prejean also claims that Dobie Williams was mentally retarded. But the same federal judge who thought he deserved a new sentencing hearing also upheld the finding of the state Sanity Commission report on Williams, which concluded that he had a “low-average I.Q.,” and did not suffer from schizophrenia or other major affective disorders."

"Indeed, Williams’s own expert at trial concluded that Williams’s intelligence fell within the “normal” range."

"Prejean mentions none of these facts.”   

“In addition to lying to the police about how he came to have blood on his clothes, the best evidence of O’Dell’s guilt was that Schartner’s (the rape/murder victim’s) blood was on his jacket."

"Testing showed that only three of every thousand people share the same blood characteristics as Schartner."

"Also, a cellmate of O’Dell’s testified that O’Dell told him he killed Schartner because she would not have sex with him.”   

---------------------
Does Truth Matter? Sr. Prejean, The Church & U of Notre Dame 
---------------------

“After the trial, LifeCodes, a DNA lab that O’Dell himself praised as having “an impeccable reputation,” tested the blood on O’Dell’s jacket — and found that it was a genetic match to Schartner. When the results were not to his liking, O’Dell, and of course Sr. Prejean, attacked the reliability of the lab O’Dell had earlier praised."

"Again, as with Williams’s conviction, the federal court reviewing the case characterized the evidence against O’Dell as ‘vast’ and ‘overwhelming.’  “   

Sr. Prejean again sees nefarious forces at work. Not racism this time, for O’Dell was white. Rather, she charges that the prosecutors were motivated to convict by desire for advancement and judgeships. Yet she never contacted the prosecutors to interview them or anyone who might substantiate such a charge.

She, just, made it all up.

“(Prejean) omits the most damning portion of (O’Dell’s criminal) record: an abduction charge in Florida where O’Dell struck the victim on the head with a gun and told her that he was going to rape her. This very similar crime helped the jury conclude that O’Dell would be a future threat to society. It supports the other evidence of his guilt and thus undermines Prejean’s claim of innocence.”   

“There is thus a moral equivalence for Prejean between the family of an innocent victim and the newfound girlfriend of a convicted rapist and murderer.”   “This curious definition of “the victims” suggests that (Prejean's) concern for “victims” seems to be more window-dressing for her cause than true concern.”   

======
Read Victims of Dead Man Walking, the true story of the rape and murder of Faith Hathaway by Robert Lee Willie and Joe Vaccaro, by the case Detective Mike Varnado,
======

(d) Hardly The Death Of Innocents: Sister Prejean tells it like it wasn’t — Joseph O’Dell, by Anonymous, at author’s request   

"In lionizing convicted murderer Joseph O’Dell as being an innocent man railroaded to his 1997 execution by Virginia prosecutors, Sister Helen Prejean presents a skewed summary of the case to bolster her anti-death penalty agenda."

"While she is a gifted speaker, she is out of her element when it comes to “telling it as it was” in these cases."

"Prejean got to walk with O’Dell into the death chamber at Greensville Correctional Center on July 22, 1997."

"However, she wasn’t in Virginia Beach some 12 years earlier when he committed the crime for which he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. That is where the real demon was evident, not the sweet talking condemned con-man that she met behind bars."

"O’Dell was, in the words of then Virginia Beach Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Albert Alberi (case prosecutor), one of the most savage, dangerous criminals he had encountered in a two decade career."

 "Indeed,O’Dell had spent most of his adult life incarcerated for various crimes since the age of 13 in the mid-1950’s."   

At the time of the Schartner murder in Virginia, O’Dell had been recently paroled from Florida where he had been serving a 99 year sentence for a 1976 Jacksonville abduction that almost ended in a murder of the female victim (had not police arrived) in the back of his car."   

"The circumstances of that crime were almost identical to those surrounding Schartner’s murder. The victim of the Florida case even showed up in Virginia to testify at the trial. Scarcely a mention of this case is made in the Prejean book."

"Briefly, let me outline some of the facts about the case:

Numbers added by Sharp

1) "Victim Helen Schartner’s blood was found on the passenger seat of Joseph O’Dell’s vehicle;
2) Tire tracks matching those on O’Dell’s vehicle were found at the scene where Miss Schartner’s body was found. The tire tread design on O’Dell’s vehicle wheels were so unique, an expert in tire design couldn’t match them in a manual of thousands of other tire treads. 
3) The seminal fluids found on the victim’s body matched those of Mr. O’Dell;
4) and pubic hairs of the victim were found on the floor of his car.   
5) The claims that O’Dell was “denied” his opportunity to present new DNA evidence on appeals were frivolous. In fact, he had every opportunity to come forward with this evidence, but his lawyers refused to reveal to the court the full findings of the tests which they had arranged to be done on a shirt with blood stains, which O’Dell’s counsel claimed might show did not have the blood marks from the defendant or the victim. 
6) Manipulative defense lawyer tactics were overlooked by Prejean in her narrative.  O’Dell was far from a victim of poor counsel.  As matter of fact, the city of Virginia Beach and state government gave O’Dell an estimated $100,000 for his defense team at trial.  This unprecedented amount nearly bankrupted the entire indigent defense fund for the state. He had great lawyers, expert forensic investigators and every point at the trial was contested two to five times.
7) There was no “rush to justice” in this case.   
8) O’Dell’s alibi for the night of Schartner’s murder was that he had gotten thrown out of the bar where he encountered Schartner following a brawl. However, none of the several dozen individuals supported his contention – there weren’t any fights that night. 
9) Rather, several saw Miss Schartner getting into O’Dell’s car on what would be her last ride.   
10)But Prejean would want us to believe the claims of felon Joseph O’Dell. He had three trips to the United States Supreme Court and the “procedural error” which Prejean claims ultimately doomed him was the result of simple ignorance of basic appeals rules by his lawyers.   
11) Nothing in the record ever suggested that Joseph O’Dell, two time killer and rapist, was anything but guilty of the murder of Helen Schartner.   

Justice was properly served.   

1) Originally published here: http://homicidesurvivors.candothathosting.com/2009/05/04/sister-helen-prejean-the-death-penalty-a-critical-review/  

======
600+ pro death penalty quotes from murder victim's families &
3300+ from some of the greatest thinkers in history
http://prodpquotes.info/ 
====== 
 
Additional research,w/sources, w/fact checking/vetting & critical thinking, as required of everyone.  
 
1) The Death Penalty: Justice & Saving More Innocents
and
Students, Academics & Journalists: Death Penalty Research
(7 pro death penalty experts included)
======
Partial CV
Posted by at

Sr. Helen Prejean: More Problems & Full Rebuttal

Boston College -- Sr. Helen Prejean: More Problems & Full Rebuttal
sent 10/14/2014

To: Students, Professors & Administration, 
School of Theology and Ministry, Boston College and
ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTON

bcc: Boston Globe
 
RE: God Allows Us to Wake Up”: Sister Helen Prejean Comes to BC, By: Craig A. Ford, Jr., Graduate Students of Color Blog, 10/11/14,
http://bcgsca.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/god-allows-us-to-wake-up-sister-helen-prejean-comes-to-bc/
 
From: Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, Houston, Texas, CV at bottom
 
Mr. Ford speaks of us being introduced to the "reality of capital punishment" by Sr. Prejean and being "honest with oursleves".
 
Sadly, the article defines "nothing could be further from the truth".
 
Sr. Prejean is rebutted on all points. I am happy to discuss all these issues with her on a BC site.
 
The sister states: “We’re good, not bad people,” “We’re just real ignorant!”. . . or susceptible to deception.
 
"Wake Up!"  Do you really think Sr. Prejean doesn't know what she is doing?

======
Read Victims of Dead Man Walking, the true story of the rape and murder of Faith Hathaway by Robert Lee Willie and Joe Vaccaro, by the case Detective Mike Varnado,
======

1) Sr. Prejean claims that "75% of those on death row aren’t educated above a sixth grade level".
 
Sharp reply: 13% are educated to 8th grade or below. Median education on death row is 12th grade, with 87% above 8th grade. (1).

2) Ford or Sr. Prejean: " . . . since 1973, there have been 146 exonerations (from death row)."
 
Sharp reply: This has been a well known fraud, beginning about 15 years, ago, when the number was 69.  Based upon numerous reviews, possibly, as many as 25-44 actual innocents (as of today) have been discovered and released from death row (2). Anti-death penalty folks just redefined "innocent" and "exonerated" as if they redefined lie as truth and put a bunch of cases into those fraudulent definitions (2).
 
 
3)  Sr. Prejean commonly, calls the death penalty racist, refers, herein, to the primary execution states as "former slave states" and, recently stated, while in St. Louis, “the system of injustice which disproportionately kills black bodies.”, a statement which can, reasonably, be seen as putting another match to the powder keg in Ferguson, Mo.
 
Ford writes: "Sister Helen devastates us with the reality that the death penalty is sought more often against people of color than against whites".
 
Sharp reply:  "As blacks represent 47% of murderers and whites 37%, whites are about twice as likely to be executed for committing murder than are blacks", with whites 56% of those executed, 34% blacks." (3)

======
Later data:  Race, ethnicity and crime statistics (3a)

For the White–Black comparisons, the Black level is 12.7 times greater than the White level for homicide, 15.6 times greater for robbery, 6.7 times greater for rape, and 4.5 times greater for aggravated assault.

For the Hispanic- White comparison, the Hispanic level is 4.0 times greater than the White level for homicide, 3.8 times greater for robbery, 2.8 times greater for rape, and 2.3 times greater for aggravated assault.

For the Hispanic–Black comparison, the Black level is 3.1 times greater than the Hispanic level for homicide, 4.1 times greater for robbery, 2.4 times greater for rape, and 1.9 times greater for aggravated assault.

Sharp: As the most common capital murders, those which are death penalty eligible, are rape/murders and robbery/murders, the perceived "disparities" (aka expected multiples) will most likely be even greater than the numbers, above, as reason would predict.
======

"There is no race of the offender / victim effect at either the decision to advance a case to penalty hearing or the decision to sentence a defendant to death given a penalty hearing." (3)
 
4) The sister calls the death penalty classist.
 
Sharp reply: 99.8% of poor murderers avoid the death penalty. It depends, strictly, upon the definition of the wealthy, as to whether or not wealthy murderers are more or less likely to be executed than poor murderers, in the context of the very small percentage and number of wealthy murderers (4).
 
5) Sr. Prejean states: "we turn our eyes away from the fact that we view violence as redemptive."
 
Sharp reply: Why would we turn our eyes, away? Christians, more than any group, understand the redemptive value of violence, not only with the Passion of the Christ, but the redemptive value of the death penalty, as detailed for 2000 years (5). As the Sister called God an ogre for crucifying His Son (6), her perspective is expected. It appears she was, later, rebuked by the Pope, as I, previously, detailed.
 
 ======
 
Mr. Ford ends with this:
 
"Will we ourselves allow this logic to become reality again?"
 
One can only hope and pray that logic and reality will prevail, as it did not in Ford's article.
 
 FOOTNOTES
 
1)   Table 5, Capital Punishment 2012, Bureau Of Justice Statistics,  May 2014, NCJ 245789
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cp12st.pdf
 
2)  Start with sections 3 & 4, within
The Innocent Frauds: Standard Anti Death Penalty Strategy
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-innocent-frauds-standard-anti-death.html
 
3) RACE & THE DEATH PENALTY: A REBUTTAL TO THE RACISM CLAIMS
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2012/07/rebuttal-death-penalty-racism-claims.html

3a)  REASSESSING TRENDS IN BLACK VIOLENT CRIME, 1980.2008: SORTING OUT THE "HISPANIC EFFECT" IN UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS ARRESTS, NATIONAL CRIME VICTIMIZATION SURVEY OFFENDER ESTIMATES, AND U.S. PRISONER COUNTS, See pages 208-209, FN 5,  DARRELL STEFFENSMEIER, BEN FELDMEYER, CASEY T. HARRIS, JEFFERY T. ULMER, Criminology, Volume 49, Issue 1, Article first published online: 24 FEB 2011  
https://www.academia.edu/8359043/Reassessing_Trends_in_Black_Violent_Crime_1980-2008_Sorting_out_the_Hispanic_Effect_in_UCR_Arrests_NCVS_Offenders_Estimates_and_U.S._Prisoner_Counts 
 
4)   See  Is There Class Disparity with Executions?
 
within   The Death Penalty: Fair & Just
             http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-death-peanalty-fairjust.html
 
5)  The Death Penalty: Mercy, Expiation, Redemption & Salvation
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-death-penalty-mercy-expiation.html
 
6) As presented to you within email dated 10/5/2014 11:29:11 A.M. CDT, as "Sister Helen Prejean: A Rebuttal"  and as found within:
“God, ogre comparison doesn’t fly with interfaith crowd”, Paul A. Anthony, Rocky Mountain News, 03:35 p.m., August 24, 2008

======
600+ pro death penalty quotes from murder victim's families &
3300+ from some of the greatest thinkers in history
http://prodpquotes.info/ 
====== 
======
 
Additional research,w/sources, w/fact checking/vetting & critical thinking, as required of everyone.  
 
1) The Death Penalty: Justice & Saving More Innocents
and
Students, Academics & Journalists: Death Penalty Research
(7 pro death penalty experts included)
======
 
Partial CV
Posted by at
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