Nobody ever would have expected a man who spent his early career prosecuting those on death row and wrote a book advocating Capital Punishment to work against the very system he helped to impose in Pennsylvania.

However, this was the story told to a group of nearly 100 students last night by former Attorney General Ernest D. Preate Jr., whose line of work was completely altered after he was sent to federal prison for a year for committing mail fraud.

After prosecuting prisoners on death row, and being in prison himself, Preate said he saw the weakness of the criminal justice system from a perspective few have had.

"I don't know that there was ever another person who was as high in the criminal justice system and has done the things that I had, and who has then seen and experienced the other side," Preate said.

He added a combination of moral reasons, related to his affiliation with the Catholic Church, and personal reasons, from a near-death motorcycle accident, contributed to his change of mind. As he was lying in a hospital with all his bones fractured and shattered, Preate said he prayed for a chance to live. He said it made him realize he must give up his work prosecuting those on death row.

"If I was asking God to spare my life, it just would not be okay to say, 'Let me authorize the killing of another man.' "

Zebulan Bartels, president of Pax Christi, said his organization stands for the same principles as Preate.

"We believe there is no justification for execution by the state under modern circumstances," Bartels said. "Bishops have testified against it, popes talk about it constantly and it has the same status as abortion in terms of rejection."

Preate also discussed his beliefs on restricting the execution of the mentally challenged.

Last year the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded, Preate added. However, the court did not set standards on what meets such a qualification.

"We talked about the issue of mentally retarded people because the average testing of IQs of people on death row was equal to that of a 5th-grader," Preate said. "In fact, if you look at the entire state prison level, they are testing on the 8th-grade level."

By looking at the statistics to "whittle down the death penalty," Preate said 85 percent of people previously surveyed said they supported the death penalty. The percentage has recently dropped to the low 60s.

Michael Tornambe (senior-international politics) summed up Preate's argument by saying many people no longer have faith in the criminal justice system.

"People don't have confidence in the process because of the way defense attorneys are picked, the people [on death row] consistently being found innocent because of DNA evidence and because it often seems like a racist process," Tornambe said.

The ratio of incarcerating black men to white men is 16-to-1, Preate said. Foreshadowing what he sees as an upcoming problem, he added whites are going to become the minority in America by 2030.

"That's what happened in South Africa, and it will happen again -- it's called revolution," Preate said. He compared the uprising of former criminals in poverty to the fictional character Jean Val Jean, from the novel Les Miserables, who, after imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread, joined the revolution against the government.