Dead Man

Sister Helen Prejean is about to embark on another friendship with an inmate on Louisiana's death row, a relationship that will likely culminate in accompanying the convicted murderer to his execution.Prejean, who wrote of her ministry to death row inmates in "Dead Man Walking," a best-selling book made into a Hollywood film, has accompanied five inmates to their executions. It never gets easier."I just never get used to it because the death house has this surreal aspect to it, that everything seems so normal," Prejean says.

"Dead Man On Campus" is certainly that dead, I mean.It certainly isn't funny. Sure, there are a few laughs, like when two guys in camouflage makeup zigzag their way up a street (kind of like John Belushi sprinting up the steps of the administration office in "Animal House").But the jokes are few. And the only real reason you'll laugh is that, by the time they appear on screen, you've been waiting so long for the opportunity, you'll laugh at anything.From MTV, the same folks who earlier brought forth "Joe's Apartment," about a guy and some talking cockroaches, "Dead Man On Campus" is about two college freshmen.

A shooting in Edmondson Village yesterday afternoon left a man in his early 20s dead and another man wounded. Police were questioning a possible suspect, a department spokeswoman said.Police did not immediately release the names of the victims. Officers at the scene said they were investigating the incident, which occurred minutes before 3 p.m., as a failed robbery attempt.The dead man was found lying on a sidewalk in the 3800 block of Gelston Drive, a block from Lyndhurst Elementary School.

A man reportedly upset about his girlfriend's desire to end their relationship fatally shot the woman as she worked at a food stand in Lexington Market yesterday evening then fatally shot himself, city police said.An unidentified man who was shopping in the crowded market suffered a minor gunshot wound in the left leg from a stray bullet from the shooter's weapon, police said.After the shooting, shoppers ran to the Eutaw and Lexington streets exits. One shopper described the scene as "a mass of confusion."

A man shot and wounded two Baltimore police officers last night inside a West Baltimore rowhouse before one of the officers fired back and killed the suspect, touching off a near-riot by grieving neighbors and relatives.The shooting at 9: 30 p.m. in the 700 block of W. Lanvale St. in the Upton neighborhood brought an angry reaction from the more than 100 people who gathered outside and screamed obscenities and threw bottles at police and the news media.One officer, identified as a 32-year-old with 10 years on the force, was shot in the hand.

A pregnant woman who was killed Monday on a West Baltimore street was shot with the same handgun used to kill a man who was slain nearby, city police said yesterday.Detectives, however, do not know whether the dead woman was a bystander hit by a stray bullet or was killed because she witnessed the man getting shot, police said."She was probably in the wrong place and wrong time," said NTC Officer Angelique Cook-Hayes, a police spokeswoman.Police identified the dead man yesterday as Troy Brinson, 26, of Brooklyn, N.Y. Cook-Hayes said detectives believe his slaying was drug-related, but she would not elaborate.

Dead Man WalkingOriginal Soundtrack Recording (Columbia 67522)With a contributors list that includes such names as Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Suzanne Vega, Eddie Vedder and Patti Smith, "Dead Man Walking" looks at first like just another celebrity-packed soundtrack album. But this album has more going for it than mere star power, as the songs assembled here augment the movie's argument by offering a dozen meditations on crime, punishment and justice. Some, like Carpenter's "Dead Man Walking (A Dream Like This)"

Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man," opening today at the Charles, is a western from the anti-universe, an attempt to take all the values of the most beloved of American genres and invert them so totally that the result is almost like a negative image.The hero is, literally, a dead man walking: He's got a bullet in his heart, and the life is slowly leaking from him as he wanders a zone of exploitation, murder, despair, racism and sick violence called the American frontier.The movie inverts not only the outer values of the genre but the inner rhythms as well: Where the traditional western once meant to be lean, swift and economically told, this one is almost anti-dramatic.

"Dead Man's Walk" is mythic in its approach to the Old West and epic in its scope. It includes some fine acting, wonderful writing and magnificent cinematography, enough violence to keep even the most testosterone-laden male happy and a handful of strong female characters to help balance the equation.But it's no "Lonesome Dove," and your fondness for it will probably be in direct proportion to your willingness to forgive it that transgression.The latest from the guaranteed-ratings-blockbuster pen of Larry McMurtry, "Dead Man's Walk" tells the early adventures of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, the two old cusses who took a herd of cattle to Montana in "Lonesome Dove" a few years back.

A Baltimore man was arrested Tuesday and charged with trying to buy $2,445 worth of merchandise with a credit card belonging to another man who died recently.The man was charged with trying to use the card to buy two television sets, two videocassette recorders and two pagers from the Montgomery Ward store in the 6700 block of Ritchie rTC Highway, police said. The charge would not go through because the account had been closed, police said. The card's owner had been dead for a month.Police arrived at the store about 8 p.m. Tuesday and found the suspect being detained by store security.

After 31 years of marriage, you learn a few things. Here's the No. 1 thing you learn: Never, ever forget your wedding anniversary. That's why I was intrigued by a recent letter in the syndicated Ask Amy advice column. "Dear Amy," a guy wrote, "I forgot my 18th wedding anniversary. I have no excuses." Naturally, my first thought was: You're a dead man. D-E-A-D. I don't have to read the rest of your letter, pal. You're deader than Rod Blagojevich's career. "I discovered my sin," the guy continued, "when I ... discovered a 'happy anniversary' note my wife had left.

Though yesterday's cold, driving rain kept many people indoors, it did not slow the increase in violence that has marked the opening days of the new year. Three men were shot, one fatally, about 2:15 p.m., three blocks from Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was the city's 11th killing in the first seven days of 2009 and the sixth in the Eastern District. After a 17 percent drop in homicides last year, Baltimore is in the midst of one of its worst stretches of killings since Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III took control of the department in mid-2007.

City police fatally shoot knife-wielding man A city police officer fatally shot a man last night in an East Baltimore house when the man lunged at police with a knife after stabbing two other people in the dwelling, a department spokesman said. Names of the dead man, the stabbing victims and the officer were not available last night, police said. Officer Troy Harris, the spokesman, said Eastern District police responding to a report of a stabbing inside a house in the 800 block of N. Belnord Ave. about 10:50 p.m. entered the dwelling and found two people in a room bleeding from stab wounds; a man standing nearby was armed with a knife.

Dana Kollmann writes about the hot summer day she went to a squalid rowhouse to collect evidence of a drug overdose. She describes how she photographed a man dead in the bathroom, a syringe still in his arm. In another room of the rowhouse, she recalls, the dead man's brother sat at the kitchen table -- and gnawed at a drumstick and played along with a TV game show. It was Wheel of Fortune and, according to Kollmann, the brother called out an answer: "Fun in the sun." "You just don't see this stuff on CSI," said Kollmann, a former real-life crime scene investigator for the Baltimore County police and author of a new book that chronicles her adventures.

Carroll County Driver, 16, dies of crash injuries The driver of a car carrying North Carroll High School students that was involved in a crash Friday died that night, police said yesterday. Three passengers were being treated last night at Maryland Shock Trauma Center. Corey Patrick Redding, 16, lost control of the car he was driving, hitting a telephone pole and a house, police said. Passengers Andrew Clark and Christopher Wagner were in serious but stable condition yesterday, police said.

WASHINGTON -- Seventy-six years ago, thousands of people came to lynch James Cameron. In this, he was not unique. An estimated 4,700 Americans - the vast majority of them black men - suffered that fate in the years between the Civil War and the civil rights movement. Here's what makes Mr. Cameron different: He survived. The rope around his neck and the mob howling for his blood, but he survived. He is believed to be the only person ever to do so. James Cameron died last Sunday at 92 after years of failing health.

The death penalty, like war, is easier to support in the abstract, when someone else is doing the actual dirty work, the switch-pulling, the injection, the shooting - and in a place out of view, out of earshot, far removed from our safe, comfortable world. Perhaps the best thing about Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, which is receiving an exceptionally strong production by the Baltimore Opera Company, is how quickly and irrevocably it pulls audiences into an issue and a reality that usually get no closer to us than a newspaper headline or a snippet of film at 11. Dead Man Walking Baltimore Opera Company.

I am very happy that we have this opera," says Sister Helen Prejean. She's speaking by phone from Baton Rouge, La., about Dead Man Walking, the work by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Terrence McNally that will be performed this week by the Baltimore Opera Company. "The music and the drama take the public through this incredible journey," she says. Journey. That's a word Prejean returns to often when talking about the path she followed. First was the physical journey -- a three-hour drive from the parish of New Orleans where her order, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, served the poor, to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

Anyone who appreciates live theater bolstered by profound social commentary will welcome Dead Man Walking, the collaborative venture between Moonlight Troupers of Anne Arundel Community College and Dignity Players of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis. Also sponsored by AACC's Institute for Criminal Justice, Legal Studies and Public Service, the Moonlight Troupers-Dignity Players production of Tim Robbins' play opened last weekend in Humanities 112 on the Arnold campus and continues in the intimate theater space tonight and tomorrow night.

A one-room fire in a Southeast Baltimore rowhouse left a man dead and a woman in critical condition yesterday afternoon, fire officials said. Firefighters responding to an alarm just before 2 p.m. found smoke coming from the second floor of the two-story home in the 400 block of Elrino St., off Eastern Avenue. The fire was contained in the room and did not spread to neighboring rowhouses. One man, whom fire officials refused to identify, was pronounced dead at the scene. The injured woman was taken to the burn center at the nearby Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, where she was listed in critical condition.