Prejean visited Sonnier in prison and agreed to be his spiritual adviser in the months leading up to his execution. Doing this made Prejean more aware of the process involved in executions. She began speaking out against the death penalty. At the same time, she also founded Survive, an organization that counseled the families of victims of violence.
Since 1982, Prejean has ministered to many other inmates on death row, and has witnessed several more executions. She served as National Chairperson of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty from 1993 to 1995.
In 1999, Prejean formed Moratorium 2000, a petition drive that eventually grew into a national education campaign, The Moratorium Campaign.[5] The organization Witness to Innocence,[6] a group of death row survivors who were convicted for crimes they did not commit, started under The Moratorium Campaign.
Prejean published her second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, in December 2004. In this book, she tells the story of two men, Dobie Gillis Williams and Joseph O'Dell, whom she accompanied to their executions. She believes that both men were innocent. The book also examines the recent history of death penalty decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States and looks at the track record of George W. Bush as Governor of Texas.
Prejean now bases her work at the Death Penalty Discourse Network in New Orleans, and spends her time giving talks across the United States and around the world. She and her sister, Mary Ann Antrobus, have been deeply involved at a center in Nicaragua called Friends of Batahola.[7]
