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Volume 30, Number 4 (1996) reprinted by permission of the Law Review cite as 30 U.S.F.L. REV. 1143 (1996) By CAROLE SHAPIRO*
WHEN I FIRST SAW Dead Man Walking,1 I was moved by the strong anti-capital punishment statement I thought the film made. Discussing it with friends and strangers, however, I was surprised to hear the range of opinion about the film's point of view on this issue. Later, when I committed myself to write about Dead Man Walking for this law review, I decided to pursue my earlier informal inquiry and focus on what the movie, when analyzed objectively, said about the death penalty. To help with this project, I decided to speak with death penalty lawyers and other experts in the field. While they were not all cinema mavens, I thought these people would have something intriguing to say about the movie's perspective. And they did, although their comments on the death penalty itself were equally stimulating. Also interesting to note was the group's full spectrum of responses to the film, which echoed what I had earlier observed. I am delighted that I was able to speak to the thoughtful and busy people whose voices ended up in the pages of this article. Each of the phone interviews was important in the development of my analysis of Dead Man Walking, and I am deeply appreciative to my subjects for their time. Of course, I would have liked to have spoken to more people, but limitations of various sorts interfered with my best-laid plans. In the course of this project, my ideas about the movie, which I ultimately saw several more times, changed. As I learned more about what the film had omitted and thought more about what had been included, I saw its limitations both as a work of art and as a statement about the death penalty. In the end, I decided that my original understanding of the film as an anti-death penalty work reflected my own feelings at least as much as the filmmaker's. In writing this critical piece, I do not mean to downplay the film's emotional effect on many of its viewers, including one of Robert Lee Willie's victims. I just wish the film was more than I have come to understand it to be. Introduction Sister Helen Prejean's book Dead Man Walking2 is passionately anti-capital punishment. When she began spiritually ministering to Louisiana Death Row inmates, she knew little about the issue. But her immersion in the efforts to save their lives made her an anti-death penalty activist. The book details Sister Prejean's work with survivors of murder victims and also makes both a religious and political case against executions. Although readers may ultimately disagree with the author, they can have no doubt about her stance on the death penalty or her reasons for opposing it. The movie Dead Man Walking, however, which has been both a critical and box office success, fails to deliver the same unequivocal abolitionist punch as the book. Indeed, despite the author's statements that she "collaborated very closely with director/screenplay writer Tim Robbins in every line, every scene"3 of it, viewers are torn about whether or not this is even a film with an anti-capital punishment point of view. While many experience the movie as a strongly affecting statement against executions, others see it differently. One critic, for example, provoking a flurry of letters in the Los Angeles Times, went so far as to assert that Robbins tries "to manipulate audiences into a revenge mode."4 Another, Professor Hugo Bedau,5 celebrated for his books and articles on capital punishment, wrote in a letter to Sister Prejean that "if [Dead Man Walking] is a movie in opposition to the death penalty, I shudder at the thought of a movie intended to support [it]."6 Some consider the disagreement over Dead Man Walking's message as virtue, proof of its "balance"7 and "evenhandedness."8 Although Wendy Lesser, author of Pictures at an Execution,9 criticized the film for other reasons, she asserted that Tim Robbins was "under no obligation to create a piece of anti-death penalty propaganda."10 Moreover, she said, his film should not be judged on his success in accomplishing that. While I agree with Lesser on this point, Dead Man Walking would have benefitted, without becoming mere agitprop, from adopting the book's more comprehensive take on the subject. Instead, Robbins' primary focus on the religious aspect of capital punishment leaves the audience clueless about the systemic inequities and arbitrariness that led Sister Prejean to abolitionist activism. And because the movie nun never gives direct voice to her death penalty opposition as a matter of principle, viewers are not sure exactly where she stands on the issue. Given the high volume of today's law and order zeitgeist, the "balanced" Dead Man Walking is a lost opportunity to make an unambiguous statement against the death penalty. While several other capital punishment films are in the offing, including Sharon Stone's Last Dance,11 none will offer the confluence of art, politics, and talent that could have made Dead Man Walking a uniquely anti-death penalty movie. Whatever the movie's other achievements, its failure to translate the depth and breadth of the book's anti-execution position to the screen is disappointing. While the film has considerable power and has provoked discussion, one wonders why Robbins settled for such a limited exploration of the truth - political and otherwise - about the death penalty. Rather than detracting from his cinematic artistry, a fuller, more nuanced picture of the issue would have enhanced his creation overall. Render Unto Caesar Putting criticism aside, tribute must first be paid to the achievements of the film Dead Man Walking. It has garnered critical acclaim for both its moral vision as well as its dramatic force. Through the popular culture, the movie has prompted some to reconsider the merits of capital punishment. The film also appears to have generated heightened interest in the death penalty issue. That phenomenon is dramatically manifested by the fact that Helen Prejean's book has become a bestseller since the movie opened. Although the film explores the death penalty through a narrow lens, it provides viewers with an idea of what life is like behind the thick walls that shield Death Row from public scrutiny. The audience gets a sense of the agony the capital process creates. We see the inmate waiting for his legal deus ex machina, and when that hope fails, we watch him wait to die. In those last hours, we are witness to Poncelet's visit with his family. That scene captures the pain and poignancy of what they all know is their final meeting. Helen Prejean recently acknowledged that the scene with the family was a realistic representation of what actually took place.12 Tim Robbins was also pleased with this segment because it so successfully "captured a moment."13 At the same time, he commented, it humanized convicted murderers. "We don't want to think of them as human.... We want to think of them as monsters, as not having mothers, as not having brothers."14 The movie places the audience in a position to do more than just observe the death watch from a distance. Viewers share the experience with the convicted murderer, which is a tribute to the high level of artistry on the part of Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon. Their work is critical to the movie's effectiveness in making Poncelet something other than a debased killer. It propels us with him on his journey towards the execution chamber. By the time Penn is a "Dead Man Walking" in slippers and diaper, the viewer feels his terror at what awaits him. Like Sister Helen, the audience dreads the inevitable separation at the moment he crosses the threshold of his death. The pas de deux between Sean Penn's Matthew Poncelet and Susan Sarandon's Sister Helen provides the movie's dramatic heart. Through tight close-ups and the magic of the big screen, the audience members become part of the evolving connection between them. We feel Poncelet's increasing trust in Sister Helen as he opens up to her. As she reaches him, he transcends his "tough con" role, and their connection touches the audience members. Despite the odds, Poncelet has become human. The movie has additionally been praised for its verisimilitude in depicting the pain of the murder victims' survivors. While it is not unusual for films to show the effects of violence, this work makes the viewers feel "the savagery of senseless crime, the heartbreak of families destroyed, the grief and loss that won't let go."15 But Dead Man Walking does not stop there. It also explores more philosophical questions like "what [Sister Helen] owes to the families of the dead"16 and whether "there [can] be reconciliation after such a terrible event."17 The movie's answer seems to be a tentative yes, offering some basis for hope, despite the terrible suffering the murders have caused. Despite the film's shortcomings, Dead Man Walking has succeeded in giving many viewers a human picture of death row and the execution chamber. By achieving the goal of "bringing people close" to the capital process, Sister Helen says the film has made them "feel like they're participants now in the discussion," thereby opening "new possibilities ... for debate ... on the death penalty that we've never had before."18 The movie may also be instrumental in widening the potential abolitionist base through increased interest in the book. Whatever Dead Man Walking's cinematic shortcomings, lawyer Ronald Tabak19 believes that the work is beneficial overall because it has led so many viewers to read what Helen Prejean has written. The Guilty, the Bad and the Ugly Sister Helen Prejean's work as spiritual advisor for convicted killers Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie provides her book's dramatic focus. The movie's main character, Matthew Poncelet, is a composite of these two men: the facts of his crime are Sonnier's; his personality and character are Willie's.20 In contrast to Poncelet's cinematic confession, in the book neither man admits to the murders of conviction, although both acknowledge presence at the crime. While Sonnier put the deed on his younger brother and Willie claimed his "crimie," Joseph Vaccaro, had wielded the murder weapon, Sister Helen's spiritual counseling did not change their protestations of innocence. The book does not indicate that was her goal. Ronald Tabak has said that his client, Robert Lee Willie, never stopped denying that he had actually killed Faith Hathaway. Even after failing a polygraph test on execution eve, Willie maintained that his codefendant had inflicted the fatal wounds. "Since this case involved only one victim," Tabak surmised, "we will never know whether he or Vaccaro was mainly responsible for it." Moreover, although Sister Helen's book does not indicate that her spiritual work with Willie was directed at making him admit guilt, Tabak averred that "whether or not he actually did the killing, [she] did get him to own up to having a responsibility for having placed Faith Hathaway in that situation and to take a moral responsibility for" what happened. At the execution, Willie also told her family that he hoped his death would give them some peace. Not only does Tim Robbins make Matthew Poncelet guilty, but he also portrays the white supremacist even more unflatteringly than did Sister Helen, who, before meeting him, thought Poncelet "sounded as if he might be criminally insane."21 In describing the filmmaker's creation, she said, "this character is harder and tougher than most of the people that I have known.... [Robbins] pulled the worst traits, because he said there's no way this person can be sympathetic. Because the moral question is not what we do about innocent people or charming people or sympathetic people."22 By making Robert Lee Willie even less sympathetic on screen than he was in real life,23 Robbins has purposefully created the worst possible scenario with which to challenge the viewer's beliefs about the death penalty. In writing the Poncelet role, Robbins avoided sentimentalizing the killer, a phenomenon that Wendy Lesser explores - and deplores - in her book Pictures at an Execution. But while avoiding that pitfall, his portrait of Poncelet raises questions on other grounds. For example, Stephen Bright,24 a death penalty lawyer who generally liked the movie and recommended it to his Yale Law School death penalty seminar students, objected to the convict's depiction. Based on his own experience, he thought that making Poncelet's character so morally objectionable was unnecessary to Robbins' point. He told me that "[while] many people on Death Row aren't angels and can be difficult people at times, they still have some humanity and redeeming qualities." However, he concluded, Robbins' decision to depict Poncelet in this way "seems to be what Hollywood does, [although] one appreciates the fact it wasn't done more." "Legendary capital defense lawyer" Millard Farmer25 went beyond Bright's comments in his criticism of the movie's death row character. He reacted negatively, in part, because of the implication that the composite Poncelet was based on his client as well as Willie, thereby defaming Sonnier. Particularly objectionable to Farmer was Robbins' decision to give Poncelet a swastika tattoo on his arm. But Farmer's objections to Sean Penn's character went beyond this example of creative license. In general, he thought Robbins "fell into that trap of picking the worst character traits of the worst individuals and putting them into composite characters" because they match the "public's stereotypical image of who's on Death Row." In a phrase, the public thinks of these inmates as "disposable trash," and the character fulfills those expectations. Moreover, while the film shows Poncelet in a harsh light, it does almost nothing to illuminate the terrible reality of most death row inmates' lives prior to their convictions for capital crimes. The absence of this type of material, in part, accounts for Armond White's comment that the film "lacks social consciousness." And Kevin Doyle, the director of the New York State Capital Defender Office,26 said that Dead Man's "major failing" was not showing what he saw in five and a half years working on Alabama's death row. "Everybody there had a history of childhood or adolescent abuse or trauma, which goes a long way to explaining why they ended up where they were. That was given - to put it mildly - short shrift by Tim Robbins." While the movie does allude to the connection between poverty and capital condemnation, it does not impress the viewer with Sister Helen's related understanding: That is, there is a "greased track ... between being poor and going into prison and going into Death Row."27 Robbins' decision to make Matthew Poncelet unequivocally guilty, as well as personally repugnant, forces the viewer to consider whether even those who have murdered should die for their crimes. Tim Robbins explained his choice to make Poncelet guilty as requiring the moviegoer to grapple with hard choices. In a letter to the Los Angeles Times, responding to Millard Farmer,28 attorney for Pat Sonnier, Robbins wrote: [I]t seems to me an obvious decision that we should not kill the reformed, the remorseful, the sympathetic. For this same reason we did not make him innocent. What we are attempting to do in this film is raise the more difficult question as to whether any life can be taken, even the contemptible.29Sister Helen Prejean supported Robbins' decision to make Poncelet less sympathetic than Sonnier and Willie. In her own letter to the Times, she wrote: "The moral question is pushed with such a character: Can't we execute that trash?"30 Kevin Doyle, a Catholic whose religious beliefs have motivated his capital work, also thought that Robbins' portrayal of the Poncelet character forced the audience to consider whether there are some people the state should kill. He believed that "if the audience can respond to a character so initially repellent, it would help eliminate one of the driving forces behind the death penalty: the "social hygiene mentality.'" To people with this attitude, Poncelet and others like him are considered "undesirables whom we can cordon off, and then just be rid of." Doyle told me that unfortunately: Because the most horrific examples of social hygiene in this century took place in Europe fifty years ago, we sometimes forget that strain in this country's thinking too. The reason that the social hygiene argument can take any route is precisely because we forget that every defendant is a member of the human community made in God's image and likeness with a transcendent dimension.Ronald Tabak echoed Doyle's sentiments. He said that "it's a lot more difficult to carry off a death penalty movie with an unsympathetic character, but if you've gotten the audience to care about him, you've really done something." In a like vein, Ursula Bentele,31 Brooklyn Law School professor and capital lawyer, also respects Robbins for "taking on the hard issues" by making Matthew Poncelet guilty of a horrible crime, obnoxious, and racist. She told me that although these are all the issues that might make you say, "Sure, kill him," she does not believe the movie led to that conclusion. Moreover, Professor Bentele thought it was "courageous of the filmmakers to take out the possibility of innocence" because presenting their opposition to capital punishment "even if someone is guilty" is a much more difficult case to make. While critics Wendy Lesser and Armond White,32 faulted the film for other reasons, they expressed "respect" and "admiration" for its "hard choices." These positive reactions reflect their appreciation of the risks Robbins took with a character like the racist, manipulative, and guilty Mat- thew Poncelet. On the one hand, Robbins needed the audience to find the character initially unattractive so that the turnaround - the redemption - pays off with sufficient dramatic punch for the audience. On the other, Poncelet could not be so offensive that viewers switch off before the character's epiphany at movie's end. In general, someone like Poncelet requires audience patience and its willingness to struggle with ambiguity, elements not normally required in the Hollywood cinema. But, despite the kudos, the filmmaker's choice to make Poncelet guilty may not have been, for several reasons, quite as difficult as it first appears to be. After all, doesn't an unequivocally guilty death row inmate play to audience members' expectations? And don't they need that reality to reinforce their faith in the death process? Philosopher Hugo Bedau would probably answer yes to both these questions. He believes that, rather than challenging the audience, Poncelet's confession is exactly what it wants. This is true, although assurances of culpability are the exception rather than the rule in capital cases. Since killing the wrong person is the ultimate capital nightmare, an unambiguously guilty prisoner gives viewers "satisfaction from the mouth of the condemned man that we have the right person and that he deserves to be punished." Bedau added: We want that consolation, that reassurance. Without it, we're troubled. Either we're angry because he's defiant or we're uneasy because he may be innocent. All of that is wiped out - more or less - with his deathbed confession. It wouldn't have been as well-rounded, the ribbon on the package would've been left untied.While it might initially appear that Poncelet's guilt gives viewers something they would rather not have, maybe, in the end, they get, without knowing it, just what they need. "Pardon Is Granted to the Man Who Confesses"33 The book's theme of "taking personal responsibility for one's actions"34 does not equate with the movie's spotlight on redemption. Indeed, Sister Helen's understanding of the reasons for Robert Lee Willie's lack of remorse, despite his eventual softening, highlights the contrived nature of the cinematic focus on Poncelet's conversion. Initially, the death row inmate's obliviousness to the pain he caused Hathaway's parents made the nun "recoil at the thought of him."35 She wondered: "How dare he calmly read law books and concoct arguments in his defense? He should fall on his knees, weeping, begging forgiveness from these parents. He should spend every moment of his life repenting his heinous deed."36 But upon reflection, Sister Helen "astutely perceived"37 that Willie's "death sentence makes his own repentance even more difficult. Someone is trying to kill him, and this must rivet his energies on his own survival, not the pain of others."38 Hugo Bedau echoed Sister Helen's observations about the unlikelihood of these death row religious epiphanies. He cautioned against waiting for the "kind of spiritual conversion that we're to believe the condemned man goes through before we can think of some alternative form of punishment." For most death row prisoners, he concluded, that simply is "not in the cards." Ironically, while the movie demonizes Matthew Poncelet in a number of ways, in this central respect it softens his rough edges for its own thematic purposes. Although emotionally and factually farfetched, doesn't Tim Robbins' movie turn on the inmate's redemption? Stephen Bright believes it does not. He told me he "believes that the movie doesn't rise or fall on his coming to grips with his guilt in the moments before he was executed." However, one might argue that the confession is, in fact, the pivot on which the movie balances; otherwise, its weight would unequivocally shift towards the victims' families and away from Poncelet. It might also be said that without the confession, Dead Man Walking would give viewers little reason for opposing the execution since this sympathy is largely predicated upon the defendant's act of contrition. Moreover, in a paradox that elicited Hugo Bedau's comments, the movie indicates that Poncelet confesses and is redeemed only because of his death sentence. The focus on redemption, however unlikely, is a large part of what gives this film its religious cast. In this vein, a writer in the New York Times described Dead Man Walking as being "not about legal loopholes but spiritual ones, [as it] asks whether a convict can face death without taking responsibility for the crime."39 In emphasizing the latter, Kevin Doyle believes, Robbins' choice to "underscore the question of the defendant's guilt wasn't reaching any question the public wasn't going to have at the forefront of its consciousness anyway." He added that anti-death penalty advocates are "deeply misguided if they think that the public is not going to focus on the defendant's moral accountability." According to Doyle, it is this sacred angle that gives the film the power to touch so many of its viewers. Doyle praised the movie's spiritual dimension and contended that many people will oppose the death penalty only if they understand it in religious terms. Doyle thought that "for the most part, to place this argument on a secular playing field is a losing game." Moreover, he added, "While you have the liberal, enlightened sociological view of reality that works against the death penalty ... what trumps it is this secular social hygiene view of society where you get rid of undesirables." According to this analysis, only an appeal to religion counters those eliminatory tendencies. The cinematic closeup on Matthew Poncelet's redemption through confession makes the movie more religious than the book. Ronald Tabak feels this is true because, unlike the book, the film dedicates itself solely to the "spiritual or moral or humanistic" argument. "Except as briefly stated by the lawyer at the clemency hearing, there is no real reference that means anything to all of the other problems with the death penalty, including the politicization of it by the Governor." In contrast, Sister Helen wrote at great length about her transformation as she increasingly dedicated herself to death row work. The efforts to spare Pat Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie from execution necessarily immersed her in the legal processes of capital punishment, also teaching her, in the words of Millard Farmer, with whom she closely worked, that "the death penalty is part of the political process." Her readers are simultaneously educated as they follow her growing awareness of the business of state killings, including her eventual realization of the links between death, race, and poverty. The film's elimination of the book's political strand puts in context Wendy Lesser's comment that she found the film "shockingly religious," given what one might have expected from a work on capital punishment. She thought Dead Man Walking flawed, but not because it failed as a polemic. Lesser told me that friends "who tried to talk [her] out of disliking the movie for its religious side" thought they could do so by highlighting its utility in making the film effective anti-death penalty propaganda. But Lesser found that the movie did not work for the viewer unless she walked into the theater "believing in God and personal salvation and all that.... It doesn't arouse anything, unless it's already been implanted in you by religious instruction." Because she said the movie "depended on my being religious, and I'm not," she found it "surprisingly unmoving" given her level of interest in the issue. Moreover, Lesser added, although a person can oppose the death penalty without being religious, the movie offers little analytic material for such a viewer. In a letter to Sister Helen, Hugo Bedau was also critical of the role that "Old Time Religion" plays in the film, but for different reasons. He saw it as a factor in making Robbins' work a "very subtle and oblique but overpowering defense of the death penalty." Given the role of Poncelet's confession in "righting his relation with ... God," Bedau read the film as "clearly indicating ... it's his death ... that gives the symmetry our aesthetic and moral sensibilities require [in light of] the terrible crime itself."40 Like Professor Bedau, Millard Farmer has criticized the film, including its primarily religious cast. This is true despite a once close relationship with Helen Prejean and his earlier praise for her book. On this point, recalling the strenuous legal efforts to save Sonnier, he said, "If I'd known that redemption was the goal, this case would've been a lot easier and I wouldn't have suffered as much - I thought we were trying to save a man's life." The film's sacred thrust, sans "social consciousness,"41 is responsible for what critic Armond White considers a "sentimentalized" statement against capital punishment. That is, White told me, the film focuses almost exclusively on the individual, on his family members, on his relationship with them, without giving any systemic context for Poncelet's struggle. Even the Catholic Church's position on capital punishment, which Helen Prejean discusses in her book as the theological basis for her abolitionism, is missing. The narrow lens and a concomitant "lack of information with which the audience could think about the issue"42 made White conclude that "it's the lack of brains"43 that ruins the movie. Even if the film's thematic thrust is religious or spiritual, one could still have offered something of the worldly facts that impel Helen Prejean and so many other religious people to oppose executions. The Race to Judgment An interest solely in the individual's plight, without reference to the system's structural contribution to it, typifies Hollywood film. However, Tim Robbins' narrow cinematic perspective eliminates the role of racism in the death penalty debate, without which one cannot intelligently analyze the issue. Sister Helen extensively discusses this theme in her book (along with the role that class inequities and arbitrariness play) in supplementing opposition to capital punishment on religious and moral grounds. Although Dead Man Walking was based on the story of two white inmates, the African-American critic Armond White took the opportunity in his review of the film to note how "strange" it is that "in this era of capital punishment movies - Murder in the First and Just Cause [and Last Dance] - Hollywood can barely countenance the miscarriage of justice happening to black people."44 As Ronald Tabak noted, despite the book's discussion of the racial injustices of the death penalty, the movie shows none of it. Instead, the film, according to Millard Farmer, "ignores the racial politics of the death penalty with its gross over-representation of African-American and Latino persons on the nation's death rows, and, particularly, the outrageous over-representation of African Americans on Louisiana's death row."45 Nor does it say anything about the unlikelihood of prosecutions involving murder victims of color, a fact of great importance to Sister Helen in her work with a New Orleans murder survivors group, all of whose members were poor black women.46 Interestingly, the only place race does appear is in the film's portrayal of the African-American housing project residents who shun Sister Helen because of her involvement with the publicly and unrepentantly racist Poncelet. As Farmer and Tabak have both stated, no such incident ever took place. One wonders why race emerges in that cinematic context when it is otherwise notably absent in the film. A Delicate Balance? While, as Wendy Lesser said, the filmmaker was under no obligation to make Dead Man Walking any particular way, the ambiguity of the film's capital punishment stance leads one to wonder about Tim Robbins' cinematic intentions. Of course, having said that, he has no obligation to explain those intentions, and perhaps the movie should speak for itself, without directorial gloss. Moreover, if the filmmaker did have an unvoiced desire to make a film that spoke effectively against death, it might make sense strategically to remain silent about such goals. It is interesting to note, however, that Robbins can seem elusive about his position on capital punishment, particularly in the face of Sister Helen's outspokenness. His reticence has been notable, given his high profile on other controversial political issues. Indeed, perhaps balance was Robbins' artistic aim. This evenhandedness, in part, is said to reside in the film's depiction of the pain suffered by both the victims' parents and Matthew Poncelet's parents. But in considering the specifics of what the filmmaker chose to include as well as what to omit, one may come to question whether the film's much lauded symmetry is more apparent than real. Politics As Usual The book Dead Man Walking makes the reader understand, through Sister Helen's own illumination, how much "the death penalty is part of the political process." However, the movie shows little of the hypocrisy and opportunism that shapes the capital punishment debate. This omission is ironic in light of one critic's understanding of the film's message: "In the end ... we are no better at taking responsibility for our actions than the criminals we consign to death row."50 What are the political angles the film does suggest? The viewer sees that the battle over Matthew Poncelet's execution occurs during a gubernatorial election; there is a sense of crime as a campaign issue that undercuts efforts to persuade Governor Benedict to grant clemency. Poncelet himself, in considering his chance for survival, alludes to the political nature of the death penalty from a different perspective when he remarks that "two blacks were executed - it's time to get a white." Poncelet's supporters also describe Governor Benedict as a "reluctant supporter of capital punishment." Consistent with this observation, Benedict gives a press statement announcing his rejection of the clemency appeal, saying that he "must carry out the laws of the state" and "submerge" his own beliefs. No additional political details emerge. In contrast, the book is much more richly textured in this regard. For example, Prejean says she believes that Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards was opposed to the death penalty.51 However, during Edwards' third term, he personally "presided over" thirteen executions.52 Sister Helen says Edwards "is hesitant ... to express his own personal views on the subject [because] he fears provoking another controversy"53 in the face of his opponents labelling him "soft on crime."54 Movie viewers may be interested to learn about the system the Governor eventually devised to evade responsibility for death sentences. He appointed a "team player," Howard Marcellus, to head the Pardons Board.55 Marcellus knew his job depended on his refusing all capital pardons, thereby protecting Edwards from difficult clemency decisions,56 and acted accordingly. Illustrating another instance of the cynicism that afflicts the capital system, Millard Farmer told me a dramatic story about his last-ditch clemency effort for Pat Sonnier: The night I was there waiting to beg for Pat Sonnier's life, we were waiting for the Fifth Circuit to decide. [Governor Edwards] had a party going on with a couple of hundred people there. I was sitting in a little annex room and he said, "Aren't you ready to talk to me so I can go on with the party?" I said, "No, I want to wait until we know we're not going to get relief from the Fifth Circuit - I think there's a chance we might get relief." He said, "Come in here and let's talk a minute. I believe you're conscientious, I believe you're sincere, I think you have good legal skills. Don't you know what's going on about this? How can you put any faith in the judges of the Fifth Circuit? Do you want me to show you something?" I said, "Yes."Ronald Tabak, in his review of Sister Helen's book, expanded upon the same theme in describing his unsuccessful efforts to persuade Governor Edwards to save Robert Lee Willie's life. I had the dubious distinction of being the first lawyer for a Louisiana death row inmate whom Governor Edwards refused to meet prior to the inmate's execution. I was told that if I came to Baton Rouge the only person who would meet me ... was ... the Governor's only top aide in favor of the death penalty. I nevertheless went to Baton Rouge, and spent several hours in [his] office. During much of this time he was on the telephone with the federal prosecutor's office discussing the criminal investigation which ultimately led to the Governor being indicted on corruption charges.57Moreover, the corruption of Pardons Board head Howard Marsellus, included in the book, is missing from the movie. Marsellus' conviction for bribery58 and subsequent term of eighteen months in federal prison reflects the systemic rot. George Kendall, representing prisoners for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said Marsellus' story of corruption and "his wish he'd done things differently" is typical. "That's the death penalty up close and personal that we see everyday."59 In an interview with Sister Helen after his release from federal prison, Marsellus spoke about the quid pro quo of his appointment to head the Pardons Board. He was expected to loyally support Governor Edwards, his benefactor, and that meant during his "term on the Board every request for clemency of condemned murderers was denied."60 Sister Helen incredulously pressed him: "Are you saying that if the Pardon Board recommends the death sentence, then the governor has something to stand behind and can say that he's only following the recommendation of the Board, and that way he doesn't have to face the political fallout of commuting a sentence? Is that the way it worked?" "You've got it right," Marsellus said.61Too Hot to Handle The former Pardons Board head is one of numerous people in the book who talks about the price of working within the execution process. Because the cost is so high and so hidden, George Kendall praised the book for "making accessible the toll that the death penalty takes on whomever touches it." Conversely, in Hugo Bedau's criticism of the film, he alluded to the movie's failure to show that pain. He noted that "the film never allows doubt to grow whether these are jobs [within the system that] have to be done and for which there is no alternative."62 For example, the movie eliminates the book's Major Coody, the corrections officer in charge of Angola's Death Row and part of its "Strap-down Team."63 He tells Sister Helen that he "can't persuade himself that he's just doing his job" and "can't square it with [his] conscience, putting them to death like that."64 Coody finally asked to be transferred to another prison job, and then died shortly after the granting of his request for early retirement. In his Charlie Rose interview,65 Tim Robbins referred to a similar situation. He said: We don't want to think about the guard that has to walk the guy into the chamber. In the book, it goes into more detail than we could in the film. But there's this heartbreaking story in the book about this guard who came up to [Sister Prejean] at one point and said: "Sister, I've got [sic] to tell you, I got a problem with this. You know I'm a good man, and I've got to, I've got to take this guy and kill him. And I don't have a problem with killing: I was in Vietnam, I served my country. But this is six guys dragging this guy out." He was whimpering and crying like a baby. And this guy, she tells this story, and a year later he dies of a heart attack, totally overcome with guilt. And you know, you don't think about that.Robbins also told the interviewer about "meeting the actual warden at Angola who started expressing his doubts, his feelings as a Christian, about having nodded his head the night before to start a real-life execution."66 This scene, Ron Tabak noted, was also not in the movie and is yet another instance that offers support for critic Frank Lovece's conclusion that "Robbins' insistence that Dead Man Walking is evenhanded is rebuffed by his own filmmaking choices."67 Banquo's Ghost The movie's elimination of characters from the book who express opposition to the death penalty, from Sister Prejean to the governor to prison guards, embodies Hugo Bedau's observation that "no one in the movie (except the nameless, faceless protesters outside the prison during an execution) appears really to oppose the death penalty."68 This silence was also disturbing in the film's portrayal of Earl Delacroix, father of the young man Matthew Poncelet killed. Given his seemingly mixed feelings about the execution, he is an intriguing, ambiguous character - according to Wendy Lesser, potentially the most interesting one in the film. He is particularly notable since the other victim's family, fervently pro-capital punishment, shuns Sister Helen for her death row ministry. Delacroix seems to have been closely modeled on Lloyd LeBlanc, the father of the teenage boy for whose murder Pat Sonnier died. Like the other three movie parents, his child's death caused him great suffering, but unlike them, the execution also seems to have pained him. For example, he appears alone, ghostlike, on the fringe of Poncelet's funeral, and then tells Sister Helen he doesn't know "why he's there," and that he has "a lot of hate." In response to her statement that "maybe we can find a way out of hate together," he pessimistically demurs. However, the movie concludes with a scene, shot through a rural church window, of Delacroix praying with Sister Helen. This last tableau appears, in broad strokes, to connote optimism that Delacroix could, despite doubts, transcend hatred of his son's killer. However, Ronald Tabak reported to me that his movie audience found the reason for the father's presence so obscure that it speculated a romantic involvement was what kept him close to Sister Helen. For Hugo Bedau, the movie's ending shot of the two in the chapel was also less than satisfactory. He wrote to Prejean, "Whatever that scene is supposed to signify - reconciliation of opponents before God? two individuals searching for a way to restore their shattered lives? - it is sentimental, escapist and ambiguous."69 What interests me about these last two Delacroix sightings is the movie's failure to put his pain into words when it would have been so easy and so dramatic to do. This omission bespeaks a lack of balance in depicting the victims' parents, particularly since the final religious scene is apparently based on the last few pages of Dead Man Walking. In the book, Lloyd LeBlanc tells Sister Helen he "would have been content with imprisonment for Patrick Sonnier" rather than execution.70 Ronald Tabak reminded me that LeBlanc "regretted having been the spokesman in opposition to clemency for Sonnier." He felt "very guilty for having done that since he hadn't really believed in the death penalty," but only wanted the apology Sonnier ultimately extended. Moreover, in another detail the film skips, LeBlanc befriended Pat Sonnier's mother and other family members after the execu- tion. He also prayed for them, and wrote to Sister Helen that he understood the grief that Sonnier's death had inflicted on his "mother's heart."71 Tabak told me the film "let itself and let everybody down who's against the death penalty by not showing what happened to the murder victims' survivors after the execution." He thought the movie should have - and easily could have - shown, as the book discusses, that Faith Hathaway's family got "no solace out of the execution and was extremely angry still at just about everybody," even afterwards. Highlighting this statement, Kevin Doyle dismissed as "cruel nonsense" the "notion of the death penalty as cathartic for the murder victim's family." In contrast, Sister Helen's book, according to George Kendall, "honestly, without pulling any punches, tells the story of how the system extends and elongates the victims' dealing with their losses," something that is missing from the film. Charlie Rose asked Tim Robbins whether "an execution, in the end, relieves the pain of the family?"72 Robbins would not give a definite answer, and said, "I don't have direct experience with it."73 Yet in an earlier piece, Robbins told writer Frank Lovece that he had edited out a scene "where Helen visited [the murdered girl's parents] after the execution, and the father's telling a story and he breaks down and says, "I still wanna see him die!' The execution didn't do it for him. Revenge just didn't do it for him."74 Into the Woods Whatever imbalance critics have found in other aspects of the film, the crime flashback in the execution scene seems to have elicited the most heated reaction. As Matthew Poncelet is strapped down in these penultimate moments, the audience finally sees him stab one of the teenagers he and his codefendant had abducted. Until then, and before his confession, the flashbacks show the horrifying scene without having Poncelet actually kill or rape either of the two victims. In statements that may clarify his intent for this scene, Robbins, in the Charlie Rose interview, talked about the cost of violence. He said, "It reverberates for generations. And it's something you never forget, and so I wanted both acts of violence in the film - the execution and the murder - to resonate in an honest way."75 Wendy Lesser's understanding of that cinematic moment expanded upon Robbins' statements. While she found that part of the movie "mildly shocking," as a student of film she understood the "intercutting of the execution with the crime" as a "standard" convention. "That is part of the language of movies," she said. Indeed, it is a filmmaking tool she found mentioned in director Stanley Lumet's 1995 book, Making Movies. Echoing Robbins' explanation, she believed the flashbacks equated Poncelet's murder of his teenage victim with the state's killing of him. Judging the juxtaposition of the crime with the execution from another angle, Kevin Doyle found it "polemically" as well as dramatically effective. While acknowledging that some have criticized the movie "for giving too much air time to the crime," Doyle thought Robbins had to do that "to make permanent converts" against the death penalty. To reach viewers "in a lasting way," Robbins had to deal with the defendant's moral accountability. He said that while "it's easy" to make an anti-capital punishment film, "ten minutes after the movie when someone reads about a horrible crime, they're going to be converted back." Therefore, by being forthright about Poncelet's guilt as part of the movie mix, "Robbins provides an invitation to rethink" the issue, rather than just a "cinematic quick fix." While Ursula Bentele found the scene painful to sit through, she basically agreed with Doyle. She said that "forgetting [that many people on Death Row] did terrible things doesn't do any good." On the other hand, other critics see the last crime flashback as tipping the film's emotional balance towards support of executions. Ronald Tabak believes that the jump-cuts weaken the film's idea that "even someone who is depicted as being about as evil as you can be does have humanity about him, is a human being, and is someone you can come to care about." As he described it, during the execution scene, he heard the audience "sniffling." They were "really sympathizing with Sean Penn's character." Then the crime flashback came on the screen. All of a sudden, people sat up straight and started "gasping." The juxtaposition made Tabak "extremely irate," although he understood that the convict's change in his story after failing the last-minute polygraph test was the "apparent excuse" for the scene. (In real life, Willie was consistent in his crime account until the end.) He wished that Robbins, if he felt it essential to include the flashback, had done so earlier, giving the viewer time to recover before the film's dramatic climax. Hugo Bedau also believed that "the worst possible episode from the abolitionist's perspective is the penultimate scene in the death chamber."76 For him, it was the "principle source of [his] trouble" with the film.77 Its vivid visual moments - "strapping down Poncelet - flashback to the crime scene ... Poncelet's slow loss of breath - flashback to the crime scene" - teach that "Murderers Deserve the Death Penalty."78 Bedau concluded that the last scene "couldn't be simpler or more direct ... [because] what the viewer sees [is] a far more potent lesson than anything Sister Helen (or anybody else) ever says - and nothing anyone says or does erases the powerful impact of this death scene in the last few minutes of the film."79 Certainly, the scene seems unnecessarily (and excruciatingly) long, even continuing after Poncelet has expired. The scene ends with a horrific aerial shot of the naked, splayed bodies. Perhaps in constructing this scene, Tim Robbins made Poncelet die while strapped, christlike, to a gurney, as an attempt to create a visual statement that counterweights the flashbacks. Although Sister Helen had earlier rejected Poncelet's attempt to equate his plight with Jesus', in the end, the film arguably does just that. Does not Robbins portray Poncelet dying for all of our sins - those of omission as well as commission? Armond White seemed to think so, but was dismissive of the effort. He wrote: Penn, made up to resemble a pompadored Christ portrait, is executed with arms akimbo - Crucifix-like - with a choir on the soundtrack. Robbins is playing out a holy victim thesis - shameless since he has failed to demonstrate exactly how Penn was victimized before committing murder.80In further contemplating the significance of this constructed image, consider that Robbins created this tableau out of whole cloth. In the first place, both of Sister Helen's spiritual counselees were electrocuted, an execution method that can cause agonizing suffering before it succeeds in its terrible task. Ursula Bentele theorized that Robbins depicted lethal injection, the current method of choice, rather than electrocution in a gesture towards "modernization." However, she wondered if the more antiseptic mode of killing would facilitate death proponents' claims that Matthew Poncelet, compared to his victims, had a "relatively easy death." She added, "You can't say that so much about electrocution," which can be torturously slow and painful.81 In the second place, subjects of lethal injection would not have outstretched arms, a la crucifixion. Wendy Lesser, well-versed in the details of state killings, told me she understood that lethal injection was administered like a hospital intravenous, with arms at sides. Ursula Bentele's understanding of the injection duplicated Lesser's. She faulted the filmmaker's creation of the "not subtle at all" vision of Poncelet on the cross. She said, "If that were, indeed, the way people looked, all right. But to create a heavy-handed symbol when it's not, in fact, accurate" is objectionable. However, she also told me of a friend who presented a provocative case for Robbins' symbolism. This person theorized that "since Sister Helen was a nun, one of the ways she looks at capital punishment is through the crucifixion, although no one would say Sean Penn's character was a christlike figure. But since the crucifixion was the capital punishment of that day," the symbol might make some sense. Plausible explanation or not, it appears to me that the viewer's consciousness is unavoidably imprinted by the reenactment of the murder, without much emotional competition from the Christ on the gurney. Conclusion Sister Helen, in a recent speech, addressed the criticisms of Dead Man Walking from the left. She said Tim Robbins did not want to "make it as a polemic, [and] it's not." But, she added: Some people are disappointed in it, some of the defense attorneys want a lot more arguments against the death penalty in it, some abolitionists with whom I've been working to abolish the death penalty wanted a lot more in it too ... so people could get a lot more information about the death penalty. But as Tim said ... it's a form of art, and in art, what you do is you bring people to a place and present it to them in a way that their hearts can respond in a way they never have before.82If Sister Helen is satisfied with the cinematization of her book, perhaps that should be enough for the rest of us. But it is a false dichotomy to suggest that Dead Man Walking's effectiveness as art depends on its moving the human heart rather than the brain. The richest creative works spark both those organs, rather than settling for just one. Particularly, in considering capital punishment, heart and head need to be joined. On this point, Sister Helen's book discusses Justice Thurgood Marshall's concurrence in Furman v. Georgia.83 Marshall was of the opinion that the American people are largely unaware of the information critical to a judgment on the morality of the death penalty. He felt that if the public was better informed, it would consider capital punishment to be "shocking, unjust and unacceptable."84 In an era in which Congress drastically limits capital prisoners' ability to challenge their convictions and limits their access to legal representation, the film Dead Man Walking should not have had less heart, but, rather, more brain to accompany it. Professor Bedau's lengthy list of publications includes numerous books on the death penalty, including: THE COURTS, THE CONSTITUTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT (1977), DEATH IS DIFFERENT (1987), and DEATH PENALTY IN AMERICA (3d ed. 1982). He has also contributed articles and essays on social, political, and legal philosophy to books and professional journals. Professor Bedau was chair of the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty, 1990-93. 6. Letter (entitled Some Dissenting Reflections on Seeing a Screening of "Dead Man Walking") from H. A. Bedau, Austin Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University, to Sister Helen Prejean, 1 (Jan. 6, 1996) (on file with author). 7. E.g., "Dead Man' is a Winner, WORCESTER TELEGRAPH & GAZETTE, Jan. 29, 1996, at C3. 8. E.g., John Griffin, Just Cause, MONTREAL GAZETTE, Feb. 2, 1996, at C1. 9. WENDY LESSER, PICTURES AT AN EXECUTION (1993). The central thread of the book is the lawsuit and debate over the coverage of a California execution by a San Francisco public television station. However, Ms. Lesser, editor of the Threepenny Review, uses that case as the opportunity to explore the meaning of murder in this and other societies through its depiction in film as well as fiction, theater, the law, philosophy, and psychology. 10. Telephone Interview with Wendy Lesser, Editor, Threepenny Review (Apr. 10, 1996). Her remarks throughout the body of this article were all made during the same conversation, and will, therefore, not be further notated. 11. LAST DANCE (Touchstone Pictures 1996). 12. Frontline: Angel on Death Row (PBS television broadcast, Apr. 9, 1996) (interview with Sister Helen Prejean). 13. See The Charlie Rose Show, supra note 3. 14. Id. 15. Al Walentis, "Dead Man Walking' Shattering, READING EAGLE, Feb. 15, 1996, at C7. 16. Janet Maslin, A Condemned Killer and a Crusading Nun, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 29, 1995, at C1. 17. Id. 18. See PREJEAN, supra note 2, at 2. 19. Telephone Interview with Ronald Tabak, Special Counsel, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (Mar. 6, 1996). His remarks throughout the body of this article were all made during the same conversation, and will, therefore, not be further notated. In 1984, Mr. Tabak represented Robert Lee Willie in his unsuccessful post-conviction appeal to the Louisiana courts and the Fifth Circuit. After the Supreme Court denied certiorari, Tabak "entrusted local counsel with handling the clemency proceeding." He had previously asked capital defense lawyer Millard Farmer, see infra note 25, "to look into whether there were any grounds for initiating further litigation," and to find a spiritual advisor for Willie. Tabak and Farmer "concluded that [they] should not pursue a second round of post-conviction litigation. Meanwhile, [Millard Farmer] persuaded Sister Helen to become Willie's spiritual advisor." See Ronald J. Tabak, Dead Man Walking - An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States, 12 N.Y.L. SCH. J. HUM. RTS. 243, 244 (1994) (book review). Mr. Tabak is president of New York Lawyers Against the Death Penalty and Chairperson of the Death Penalty Committee, ABA Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities. He has also written numerous articles on the death penalty. 20. Frontline, supra note 12 (Christopher Buchanan's "Reporter's Notes") (transcript available at <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/angel/reporternote.html>). 21. See PREJEAN, supra note 2, at 119. 22. The Charlie Rose Show, supra note 3. 23. Interestingly, Ronald Tabak said that the movie could have portrayed Robert Lee Willie in an even worse light if it had included other crimes in which he had been involved. So, he said, while we should criticize his portrayal, "we shouldn't go overboard." Telephone Interview with Ronald Tabak, supra note 19. 24. Telephone Interview with Stephen Bright, Director of the Southern Center for Human Rights (Mar. 14, 1996). His remarks throughout the body of this article were all made during the same conversation, and will, therefore, not be further notated. Approximately 60% of the workload for Mr. Bright's Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia, are death penalty cases. Mr. Bright teaches a seminar on capital punishment at Yale Law School. He has also written numerous articles on capital punishment. 25. Tabak, supra note 19, at 244 (referring to Mr. Farmer as such in his review of Sister Helen's book). In turn, Tabak cites to Victoria Loe, A Life's Work: Louisiana Nun Fights Death Penalty with Book About Inmates She Counseled, DALLAS MORNING NEWS, Sept. 6, 1993, at A1 (describing Millard Farmer as a "Georgia lawyer who has devoted much of his life to filing appeals for death row inmates"). Millard Farmer, based in Atlanta, represented Pat Sonnier in his petitions to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. He also worked on behalf of Sonnier by making a clemency appeal to Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards and representing him at his Pardon Board hearing. Telephone Interview with Millard Farmer, Attorney (Mar. 4, 1996) (his remarks throughout the body of this article were all made during the same conversation, and will, therefore, not be further notated); see also supra note 19 (discussing Farmer's role in representing Robert Lee Willie). He received the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty's Abolitionist Award in 1993. 26. Telephone Interview with Kevin Doyle, Director of the New York State Capital Defenders Office (Mar. 4, 1996). His remarks throughout the body of this article were all made during the same conversation, and will, therefore, not be further notated. Mr. Doyle has been Director of the New York State Capital Defenders Office since September 1995. Before that, he represented capital defendants through the Alabama Capital Representation Resource Center. 27. See The Charlie Rose Show, supra note 3. 28. Millard Farmer, Distorting "Dead Man's' Last Wish, L.A. TIMES, Jan. 15, 1996, at F3. 29. Tim Robbins, "Dead Man Walking' No "Distortion,' Authors Contend; Death Row Lawyer Misstates the Case, L.A. TIMES, Jan. 22, 1996, at F3 (emphasis added). 30. Sister Helen Prejean, "Dead Man Walking' No "Distortion,' Authors Contend; Truth is Movie's Ultimate Defense, L.A. TIMES, Jan. 22, 1996, at F3. 31. Telephone Interview with Ursula Bentele, Professor, Brooklyn Law School (Mar. 12, 1996). Professor Bentele's remarks throughout the body of this article were all made during the same conversation, and will, therefore, not be further notated. Professor Bentele has taught a death penalty seminar/clinic for over ten years at Brooklyn Law School. She has also written on the death penalty in the United States and South Africa as well as on appellate practice. Professor Bentele is currently Director of New York Lawyers Against the Death Penalty and is a volunteer lawyer on death penalty cases in a number of states. 32. Telephone Interview with Armond White, Arts Editor and Film Critic, The City Sun (Apr. 17, 1996). His remarks throughout the body of this article were all made during the same conversation, and will, therefore, not be further notated. Mr. White is an arts critic for the New York City African-American weekly The City Sun, and is a contributor to numerous other publications. His book, THE RESISTANCE: TEN YEARS OF POP CULTURE THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (1995), is a collection of his essays. 33. THE BOOK OF CATHOLIC QUOTATIONS 764 (Farrar et al. eds., 1956) (St. Cyprian talking to Demetrianus Proconsul, 3rd Century). 34. See Tabak, supra note 19, at 277. 35. See PREJEAN, supra note 2, at 144. 36. Id. 37. See Tabak, supra note 19, at 247. 38. See PREJEAN, supra note 2, at 144. 39. Stephanie B. Goldberg, Walking the Last Mile, On Film, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 24, 1995, 2, at 9. 40. See Letter from Bedau to Prejean, supra note 6, at 4. 41. Armond White, Dead Man Screams at the Converted, CITY SUN (New York), Feb. 7, 1996, at 24. 42. Id. (emphasis added). 43. Id. 44. Id. 45. Farmer, supra note 28. 46. See The Charlie Rose Show, supra note 3. 47. Id. 48. See Lovece, supra note 4. 49. Id. 50. See Goldberg, supra note 39, at 29. 51. See PREJEAN, supra note 2, at 56, 61. 52. Id. at 57. 53. Id. at 56. 54. Id. at 58. 55. Id. at 61. 56. Id. at 62. 57. See Tabak, supra note 19, at 249 (emphasis added). 58. Howard Marsellus was convicted for accepting bribes for pardons on noncapital cases. See PREJEAN, supra note 2, at 169, 172-73. 59. Telephone Interview with George Kendall, Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense Fund (Mar. 12, 1996). His remarks throughout the body of this article were all made during the same conversation, and will, therefore, not be further notated. Mr. Kendall represents capital defendants for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York. He previously headed the ACLU's death penalty project in Georgia. 60. See PREJEAN, supra note 2, at 169. 61. Id. at 171. 62. See Letter from Bedau to Prejean, supra note 6, at 2. 63. See PREJEAN, supra note 2, at 181. 64. Id. at 180. Ronald Tabak also discussed this character in his review of Sister Helen's book. See Tabak, supra note 19, at 252-53. 65. See The Charlie Rose Show, supra note 3. 66. Id. 67. See Lovece, supra note 4. 68. See Letter from Bedau to Prejean, supra note 6, at 2. 69. Id. at 6. 70. See PREJEAN, supra note 2, at 244. 71. Id. 72. See The Charlie Rose Show, supra note 3. 73. Id. 74. See Lovece, supra note 4. 75. See The Charlie Rose Show, supra note 3. 76. See Letter from Bedau to Prejean, supra note 6, at 3. 77. Id. 78. Id. 79. Id. 80. See White, supra note 41. 81. See PREJEAN, supra note 2, at 18-20. 82. Sister Helen Prejean, Speech at the Baton Rouge, Louisiana Community Discussion on the Death Penalty 3 (Feb. 15, 1996) (transcript available at <http://www.wgbh.org>). 83. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). 84. 408 U.S. at 361 (Marshall, J., concurring); see PREJEAN, supra note 2, at 117. |
