twisted

Sister Helen Prejean, LA City Beat, 3/1/07

"Here in Louisiana, we have two district attorneys that were taking people out for a celebratory meal whenever they got a death sentence [verdict]. District attorneys have been known to give each other little backroom awards, though they don’t show them publicly. They call them the Prick Awards. They show the state bird, the pelican, flying with a hypodermic needle in their talon."

If you haven't read Sister Prejean's book Dead Man Walking, you should.

Apparently, the Prick Awards weren't always sequestered in backrooms.

Katy Reckdahl, Gambit Weekly, 1/14/03

"In the early 1990s, when Denise LeBoeuf worked as a public defender in Jefferson Parish, some prosecutors -- most notably Ronnie Bodenheimer and Jim Williams -- routinely bought each other special awards. "They gave plaques called the Big Prick awards," says LeBoeuf. "Each plaque had half of a mock hypodermic needle, a big one, along with the date and the name of the defendant who had been sentenced to death.""

"At first the plaques hung on the walls of the district attorney's office on the fifth floor of the Jefferson Parish courthouse. Then, when Bodenheimer was elected judge and took the bench in 1999, he moved his awards down to his new digs."