Death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean says young people are the most important group to educate about the injustice of capital punishment, so when St. Catherine of Siena-St. Lucy Parish in Oak Park invited Sister Helen to speak on Oct. 17, it was sure to include a youth component.

Sister Helen, who wrote “Dead Man Walking,” which was later turned into a movie with Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, spoke at the parish in the evening after gathering with middle school and high school students in the afternoon. Students first heard from Sister Helen about her work — most recently with Richard Glossip in Oklahoma —and then heard from Karen Daniel, director of the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.

Following that, the students spent time at four stations around the room where they heard from lawyers, local high school teachers and prison ministry volunteers about the death penalty, the Supreme Court, racism in convictions and more. Sister Helen spoke with the students one-on-one and went around to the tables with them.

At the end of the afternoon, students asked Sister Helen and Daniels questions about the death penalty, such as whether its use is appropriate in cases like that of terrorist Osama Bin Laden.

This is the third year the parish has sponsored talks by noteworthy women of faith but it was the first time they included a youth component. Volunteers reached out to teachers from Oak Park-River Forest and Fenwick High Schools for help. More than 100 students attended from eight area high schools and elementary schools.

Frida Kraus, a seventh-grader at St. Edmund School in Oak Park, said the afternoon taught her how she can make a difference in the world “and save innocent people from dying.”

“I think we can definitely help as younger people, help people who are ignored and help them have peace in their life instead of being bullied and stuff like that,” Kraus said.

Daughn Bledsoe, a seventh grader from St. Edmund School, attended the session to earn social-justice hours for school and she said she came away with a better understanding of the arbitrariness involved in the imposition the death penalty, how the justice system isn’t always fair and innocent people can be put to death.

“It made me feel, you know, maybe I should watch the news more, look at cases more, because these people were put to death and then later on found out that they haven’t done anything,” Bledsoe said. “It makes me feel bad for them and their families because there’s nothing you can do to bring them back to life.”

During her opening remarks, Sister Helen shared with the students her current headline- grabbing work with death penalty inmate Richard Glossip in Oklahoma who has had three stays of execution so far because of faulty drugs used to kill the inmates. The evidence and history of the case shows that Glossip is innocent of the crime he’s accused of, Sister Helen says, and she’s working with others for his release.

Glossip was convicted of hiring someone to murder the owner of a motel where he worked. The prosecutor fighting the case in “Oklahoma County single-handedly got 54 death penalties,” Sister Helen explained to the youth.

“And the young guy who murdered the owner of the motel confessed to it. He said, ‘I went in to rob him, things got out of hand,’” she said. “And here Richard Glossip is facing death. Solely on the word of this guy Justin Sneed, and why did he lie that Richard had put him up to the murder? Why did he lie about it? He lied because he was under pressure because the police detectives told him if you don’t implicate Richard in this ... we will give you the death penalty.”

Sister Helen had written Glossip a few times and then he added her to his list of people to be with him if he is executed.

“And from what I know already about the case he’s innocent. I had already written a book called ‘The Death of Innocents’ about accompanying two people to death who were innocent,” Sister Helen said. “So I got involved. I got lawyers, pro bono lawyers. They take these cases to trial, save people’s lives.”

Next she called her friend Susan Sarandon who played Sister Helen in the movie “Dead Man Walking” to help her alert the public to the injustices surrounding Glossip’s case and upcoming execution.

“Anytime you have an innocent person like this where they’re going to go to their death, they’re always going to be poor, and they can’t afford a good attorney,” Sister Helen explained. “This is very true of Richard Glossip.”

Glossip’s defense attorney was also inept.

“He was cowed and intimidated by the prosecutor and the judge. He didn’t investigate. He didn’t investigate Justin Sneed to show both that this was a 19-year-old kid in custody of the police for six months without a lawyer and he’s threatened with the death penalty. You can’t believe what he says about Richard.”

Sneed was a known drug addict with a prior history of stealing to support his addiction.

“So you have poor defense, either because they’re poorly paid, overworked or they are intimidated by the system and they have just stopped raising objections because the judge always opposes the objections of the prosecution but always overrules the defense’s objections,” she said.

Oklahoma is a state where prison officials have been experimenting with the drugs for execution. In April 2014 they botched the execution of Clayton Lockett.

“And Richard Glossip well knew that on the gurney before him had been this man and that Oklahoma now was gonna experiment on killing him,” she told the young people.

On Sept. 30, minutes past the time when Glossip was scheduled for execution, the governor issued a stay.

“Supposedly they had mixed up the drugs, the got the wrong drugs, or something like that,” Sister Helen explained.

For more information about Sister Helen’s ministry against the death penalty, visit www.sisterhelen.org.