How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
…all that stands between Robert Lee Willie and the electric chair is the Pardon Board and the governor.
I can hear the words San Quentin guards used to yell when a death-row inmate was let out of his cell: "Dead Man Walking." (7.101-102)
There's the title, folks. It's interesting that "Dead Man Walking" is called out when the convict comes out of the cell. It seems like a way of emphasizing that the cell isn't the thing trapping him; it's death. You can be walking around and skipping through daisies, but if your life is the state's to take, then you're not really free.
Quote #8
I say that an execution is a brutal and a horrible thing, and that I heard Mr. Harvey say Robert experienced no pain, but that the pain came every time he looked at his watch, knowing that in a few days, a few hours he would die. (10.22)
The knowledge of your impending death, Prejean suggests, is a kind of torture and a kind of trap. Knowledge ends up being a prison. You can see the bars up there in the future, cutting you off from time.
Quote #9
Vernon begins to cry. He just can't get over Faith's death, he says. It happened six years ago but for him it's like yesterday, and I realize that now, with Robert Willie dead, he doesn't have an object for his rage. He's been deprived of that too. (11.20)
Robert in many ways sentenced Vernon to a life of grief and despair when he killed Faith. That's why the death penalty is in some sense just: Robert ruined not just one life but multiple lives; he torments Vernon even after death. Prejean sort of suggests that Vernon might be better off if he could still hate Robert, but it's hard to know if that's true or not. Once you've killed someone, there's no repairing it—which is actually one of Prejean's argument against the death penalty itself.