October 30, 2025

By Jim Towey

Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun who wrote a 1993 non-fiction masterpiece, Dead Man Walking, an account of two inmates on death row in Angola Prison (Louisiana State Penitentiary), is the best-known proponent for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States. In her book, she tells the story of two men convicted of multiple murders whom she counseled during their time on Angola’s infamous death row. Two years after its release, the book was adapted into a movie starring Sean Pean and Susan Sarandon; the latter won an Oscar for her performance as Prejean.

I visited the Louisiana State Penitentiary last week accompanied by Tonja Myles, a board member of Aging with Dignity and a guardian angel to those struggling with addiction and mental health issues in the Baton Rouge area. We arrived on a day the prison was in lockdown due to overdose deaths the day before, so we weren’t permitted on death row to see any of the 88 men confined there.

Inside the prison

Angola carries a range of classifications for the roughly 4,600 men in custody, from minimum to maximum security. It offers a range of experiences for the incarcerated. After all, Angola has an inmate-operated rodeo on its grounds that attracts upwards of 10,000 attendees every Sunday in October, and has since 1965. Too bad I was there on a Friday.

All the wards in Angola have one thing in common: bleakness. Very little outdoor light. Grim, dated infrastructure. All what you would expect from a very old prison. Despite the concerted efforts of the warden and staff (and we met some very professional correctional officers during our visit), illegal, lethal drugs still find their way into the inmate population; fentanyl, it seems, is also serving time there. Louisiana’s jail and prison systems have been the focus of a great deal of negative scrutiny regarding the high number of inmate suicides, overdose fatalities, and deaths from dangerous accidents.

In a time of rising health care costs, growing government deficits, and unsympathetic public attitudes toward convicted criminals, taxpayer-funded enhancements aren’t on the horizon. Louisiana will increase funding for its penal system the day Sean Penn wears a MAGA cap. And Louisiana isn’t alone. Conditions in America’s prisons are likely to get worse for the same reason. Inmate idleness, drugs, gangs, and few programs means more inmates will look for escape from their misery, one way or another.

Enter assisted suicide.

Proponents of its legalization argue that individuals should be able to end their lives to avoid suffering or the indignities of end-stage illness. In the states that have legalized it, the guardrails that were put up to protect against abuse quickly have been removed. Aging with Dignity has documented that here and here. Colorado has helped two women end their lives solely on the grounds of their anorexia diagnosis; Canada is looking to expand its cynically-titled “Medical Aid in Dying” far beyond terminally ill adults to include even minors and those with mental health problems.

End their suffering?

When we arrived at Angola, I was told that a number of prisoners were on suicide watch. But according to the sad logic of the assisted suicide mentality, why bother? If inmates despair and no longer want to live, why not save money and end their suffering? A lethal injection on a prison gurney is no different from one on a hospice bed.

When a person’s life is cut short by suicide, what is lost is what might have been. During my tour, I was taken by a man serving a life sentence for killing someone when he was 19. He had been in Angola for 46 years. He staffs the Catholic chapel that was built on Angola’s grounds by inmate labor. Everything from the stain glass windows to the wooden pews to the structure itself was the work of volunteer inmate hands. Amazingly enough, they did all of this in 38 days and nights, through two 12-hour shifts.

What caught my eye was the ceiling-to-floor mural of the crucifixion of Christ. It was the work of Miguel Velez who was in the 27^th year of a life sentence for a drug-related murder when he painted it, despite suffering from cancerous tumors on his neck and back at the time. He died shortly after the chapel was dedicated in 2013.

Surely Velez knew dark periods during his incarceration, particularly in his last year. What if assisted suicide had been an irresistible option for him? His life’s greatest work would not have been created.

Those who want individuals suffering periods of misery to “escape” pain through state-sanctioned suicide need to think of what is lost when days are cut short and never lived. Velez teaches that life at the end, even in the midst of great suffering, still can have meaning and purpose.

(The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Aging with Dignity and/or its Board of Directors.)