US activist critical of Trump's impact on executions

The leading US anti-death penalty activist, Sister Helen Prejean, has strongly criticised President Donald Trump for employing violent rhetoric, instilling fear and seeking to increase the number of executions in the country.

The 87-year-old Catholic nun was particularly disapproving of Mr Trump's decision, during his first term in the White House, to end a 17-year moratorium on federal executions.

She told RTÉ's This Week; "Within those six months [at the end of his presidency] he had them all killed - 13 of them. His decision alone. And he has set a tone in the country, because he's always calling for people to be executed."

Sr Helen said that she had now witnessed eight executions, and knew some of the 13 who had been killed on Donald Trump's orders.

"You can't get around it that the death penalty is torture, which is an extreme mental and physical assault on someone rendered defenceless", she said.

Last year, 47 inmates were executed in the United States, the highest number in 16 years - with Florida accounting for 40% of the total.

Sr Helen said that racism was intertwined with executions.

"If you look at the pattern in the United States, the states that have done over 70% of the executions are the ex slave states. Because racism is so baked into the death penalty. It makes a huge difference on who's killed. And overwhelmingly it's about white victims."

She said her campaign's "work" was to educate people on the inherent failings of capital punishment, and ensure that they no longer voted in prosecutors or governors who backed executions.

Sr Helen described a new method of execution in Alabama, in which inmates are suffocated to death with nitrogen, as brutal and violent, but asserted prison authorities attempt to "mask" the cruelty by pretending they're "putting people to sleep."

She said it took the Catholic Church "1,500 years of dialogue" before it no longer accepted that a state had a right to take a person's life, but added Pope Francis and now Pope Leo had "made a difference" by articulating the abolitionist message.

"Now we got a Pope that has a great microphone for the world."

Asked for her reaction to US Defence Secretary Peter Hegseth asking Pentagon workers in March to pray for "overwhelming violence" against Iran "in the name of Jesus Christ", Sr Helen replied: "It's such a perversion of the gospel of Jesus."

She asserted that Irish people visiting the US were "diplomats and ambassadors for peace."

"Ireland, I think, is a gleaming beam of light in the world, in what you have done in abolishing the death penalty and then educating your citizens. There's a sense of peace in this country. I love coming to Ireland."

Sr Helen garnered world-wide attention when her bestselling book 'Dead Man Walking', which told the story of witnessing two executions, was turned into a film in 1995, with Susan Sarandon winning an Oscar for 'Best Actress in a leading role'.

Sr Helen was in Dublin this week to be conferred with an honorary doctorate of laws by Trinity College Dublin.