In recent years, Ohio has been second only to Texas in executing prisoners.That’s one of the reasons Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, eagerly accepted an invitation to speak at Archbishop Hoban High School on Thursday.Students are immersed in the subject as part of the national Dead Man Walking Theater Project. At Hoban, all disciplines are finding ways to include the issue in their classrooms, and students are staging a play based on the book and the Academy Award-winning movie. Performances continue tonight and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (Tickets are $7 at the door.)The Deep South has always been aggressive about capital punishment, “but Ohio? Why Ohio?” said Prejean, who expressed her surprise to an audience of 1,000 that also included students bused from Walsh Jesuit, Our Lady of the Elms and St. Vincent-St Mary high schools.For many people, their feelings on the death penalty come from an emotional place, an opinion quickly formed and then adhered to without question because it simply feels right, Prejean said.Others are deeply ambivalent, uncomfortable with how to balance Jesus’ teaching of forgiveness with a natural disgust for a murderer’s actions.But few people take a stance only after research, open dialogue and careful thought, she said.The theater project, aimed at high schools and colleges, was started by Prejean and Tim Robbins, the actor who turned Prejean’s book into a movie, as a way for young people to have that conversation.It is their hope that a new generation can be taught to go beyond a reactive need for vengeance and see capital punishment the way Prejean says she sees it: “An act of legalized hatred.”Thursday’s assembly learned how Prejean came to be the spiritual adviser of Patrick Sonnier in 1982 as he was awaiting electrocution at the Louisiana State Penitentiary.She didn’t know the details of his crime, though she knew he had been convicted of murder.“I’d never been with a murderer before,” she said, and she wondered if she would see the killer in his eyes or whether his physical behavior would betray the gentle words he used in his letters.When the guards brought him in for their first visit, “I couldn’t believe how human he looked,” Prejean said.He spoke almost nonstop for two hours, “so glad that someone found him and would listen to him with dignity and respect,” she said.He never volunteered information about his crime, but Prejean investigated on her own.Reading his prison file, she learned how he and his brother put bullets through the heads of “two beautiful, innocent” teenagers parked at a local lover’s lane, and how five other young couples later came forward to tell of how the Sonniers had raped the girls and shamed their boyfriends into silence.“There’s a part in all of us who says someone who does something like that deserves the death penalty,” she said, and outrage is an appropriate and ethical response.The challenge, she said, is moving beyond anger to a more spiritual goal, one that seeks to heal all souls.The Catholic church is opposed to the death penalty just as it is opposed to the premature ending of any life, but Principal Mary Anne Beiting said students also are encouraged to understand all views so that their opinions are informed.Prior to Prejean’s lecture, art teacher Micah Kraus was in the hall leading to the auditorium, hanging up student-drawn posters on the topic.“One of the big statistics that popped out is the number of people who have been found innocent post-execution, so many of the students made posters about that,” Kraus said.Also, because a disproportionate number of executed prisoners are black and poor, “the whole subject forces [students] to take a look at societal ills in general,” he said.Prejean told her audience one of her biggest mistakes was in not reaching out to the families of Patrick Sonnier’s victims prior to a hearing to consider his pardon one week before his execution.She said it was “cowardice” to avoid meeting them, knowing they were likely to be angry with her for counseling their children’s killers.But in the end, one of those parents turned out to be the hero of her story, she said.Lloyd LeBlanc, father of one of the victims, told Prejean that he had publicly supported the execution because he felt pressured.“Everybody is saying to him, ‘Lloyd you have to be for the death penalty or it will look like you don’t love your son,’ ” Prejean said.He found the courage to admit his personal faith did not support capital punishment, Prejean said, and she was also moved that when they prayed together, LeBlanc remembered to include the Sonniers’ mother, who faced ostracism and daily threats.“He taught me forgiveness,” Prejean said.Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.