Speak, Wide Stripes

Opponents of capital punishment will easily recognize the following individual, while advocates of

retributive justice, or those on the sidelines, might need an additional hint, for example, a photograph of the actress who portrayed her in a 1995 movie

Dead Man Walking, the movie, drastically altered important details of the real-life story recorded by Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking, the book.  Those of you who get your history from Netflix would be well served to read at least the first few chapters of the book, paying close attention to circa-1980 Louisiana (and more broadly, U.S.) arrest and incarceration statistics, especially the racial disparity between those sentenced to die and their victims (killing a white person was, and still is, much more likely to result in a death sentence in states with capital punishment than killing an African-American).

Sister Prejean's actual initial pen pal was Elmo Patrick Sonnier, not Matthew Poncelett (the Sean Penn character in the movie).  Sonnier was executed by electrocution on 5 April 1984 (true aficionados of death row lore will need no reminder of the voltage - 2000 volts for 20 seconds followed by 500 volts for 10 seconds, rinse and repeat).  I'm still efforting the 5 November 1977 front page article in the Daily Iberian describing the double homicide, which didn't yield a suspect (in this case, a pair of suspects, Sonnier and his younger brother) until one month later.  In the meantime, here is Sister Prejean's memory of it:

The mug shot of Sonnier's brother Eddie at the time of the arrest gives a cleaner picture (despite the watermark) of the brothers' general features.  Eddie died somewhat unexpectedly in prison (at the age of 57) in December 2013.