Michigan City – In a grassy field near the Indiana State Prison on Saturday, two women came from poles apart to find some common ground.

One was hoping the man who killed her daughter would never be released from prison. The other was hoping for an end to executions as a way of justice in America.

Their words were private, but they walked arm in arm to their meeting place, and later, one of them spoke of the encounter.

“You have to stand with people where you can stand with them,” said Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, a death-penalty opponent who found she had much in common with Francis VanMeter.

Like Prejean, VanMeter came here Saturday to attend an anti-death penalty rally. But she came with relatives and signs that said no murderers should live, no victims die unavenged.

VanMeter, whose 20-year-old daughter was slashed and beaten to death 11 years ago, could not understand how an organization called Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation could exist, much less organize Saturday’s rally.

Still the Merrillville woman talked quietly to Prejean for at least 20 minutes, while some of her relatives taunted speakers at the anti-death penalty rally.

Prejean, a New Orleans woman who has just published a book about the death penalty knows something of VanMeter’s pain. Her book follows the lives of two men executed in Louisiana, plus their families and the families of their victims.

As Prejean came to know the men and the families involved, she learned firsthand how wrenching the issue is, and how differently people can feel about it. “It shows both side,” she said of her book.

While Prejean remains strongly opposed to the death penalty, she does not dismiss the feelings of those who support it, especially families like the VanMeter’s who have suffered so much.

“They’re the most vulnerable people on this issue,” Prejean said. “I have great respect for them.”

VanMeter’s greatest concern is not that someone die for her daughter’s death, but that the killer – who has never been charged with murder – never kill again.

“That’s not bitterness,” Prejean said. “That’s from love.”

Prejean’s book, “Dead Man Walking, An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in America, will be released this month by Random House.