1. Dead Man Walking
... DEAD MAN WALKING Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) is a Catholic nun who exemplifies the compassion of Jesus in her work with death row prisoners. While teaching in a Louisiana ghetto, she begins corresponding with Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn), who has been sentenced to death for the brutal murders of two teenage lovers. It takes all of Sister Helen's patience to stomach this young man ... positive effect upon Matthew, helping him to take responsibility for his acts and to seek forgiveness. In the anguished minutes before this "dead man" walks to the execution chamber, she assures him...
... punishment continues is "that people don't know the truth of what is going on" (Prejean, 197.) Through her work with one man, Pat Sonnier, and the continued mission throughout her life, she has assuredly hit home with one reader. Dead Man Walking was written with the highest of intellectual standards, in a way which the reader feels no bias. She presents the facts, and they ... as precursors to legal defense, something must change. There is no institution on earth that, with flaws in the system to this magnitude, should be allowed to even consider killing a man for a crime. The only jud...