Tim Baldwin
Timothy Gregory Baldwin was convicted of murdering an 85-year-old woman and sentenced to death. He was executed in Louisiana in September 1984, between the execution of Pat Sonnier in April and Rob...
The Bible
As Shmoop has said a time or two (see "Writing Style"), Dead Man Walking is not a literary, artsy-fartsy book. Mostly it says what it means and means what it says. That meaning is that the death pe...
Albert Camus
Next to the Bible, the book that pops up most often in Dead Man Walking is Albert Camus' Reflections on the Guillotine. The guillotine here, of course, is the decapitation machine used during the F...
Despair Sign
On the way to Angola prison there's a sign along the roadside "Do not despair. You will soon be there." Prejean sees it when she first goes to visit Pat (2.8), and it is mentioned a couple of other...
Murder Victims
None of the murders in the book are actually in the book, precisely. That is, Pat and Robert both committed murders, but Prejean wasn't there when they happened, and she doesn't see the aftermath d...