"I didn't know any poor people," Prejean said. " 'Cause you know, when we are privileged, we don't know we are privileged."
More generally, she said, her previous misconceptions of poor people were emblematic of the divisions separating many Americans.
"We have exaggerated fears of each other, and we don't go into certain neighborhoods and we're afraid," Prejean said.
Prejean's first visited Sonnier on Death Row in 1982. She called the experience "life-changing."
"I'm scared to death. I mean, I'm walking in a prison for the first time," Prejean recalled. "I was so scared, because I knew I was stepping into a territory I didn't have control of."
But after she met Sonnier, and he told her about his love of hunting and the kind of "venision roast" his mother made, she added, her fears were calmed.
"He was smiling," Prejean said. "He said, 'Sister, you came. Thanks for coming to see me. Thank you.'"
"We have two million people incarcerated in this country," she added. "And most of them are abandoned."
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