Dead Man Walking

Before seeing Dead Man Walking, I was against the death penalty. However, it was not an issue that I thought a lot about because there was nothing I could do to fix it and thinking about it only made me more upset. Dead Man Walking along with my research of Sister Helen Prejean has given me a deeper insight into the world of the death penalty. The movie made me feel more than anything: feel for the prisoners, for the victims, for the families involved. I think Dead Man Walking has given me a balanced emotional scope of all the people involved in the death penalty from the people who administer the lethal shots to the people who must accept them.
Because I had not really researched much into the death penalty before seeing this movie, I really had no idea what lethal injection meant. Dead Man Walking spares its audience nothing in describing how lethal injection works. The first shot is an anesthetic, which helps the inmate to feel nothing and the people watching to see nothing of the internal pain and chaos of the next two shots. The second injection is a paralyzing agent that stops the lungs from functioning. Finally, the third shot induces cardiac arrest, killing the inmate. The cold calculated way in which this end is achieved seems as barbaric as a firing squad to me. This is no way for a human to die.
In addition, Dead Man Walking taught me about the Appeals Court on Death Row. The expense and waste and agony of people fighting for their lives through appeal after appeal is shocking. It makes sense that prisoners on Death Row would want to try to reverse their death sentence, and in a way it seems fair. However, it is completely unjust for the families of the victims to be forced to come to court year after year to sit through a trial of the same case constantly. I cannot imagine the pain and bitterness that would induce. There is no way for a family to grieve and cope with the loss of a loved one when they must constantly face his or her murderer. Also, the cost of lawyers and judges to run this Appeals Court is exorbitant; doing away with the death penalty and sticking to life in prison would actually lessen the expense.
Dead Man Walking was an amazingly executed film that showed the injustice of the death penalty without losing sight of the horrifying injustice of crime. The victims were never forgotten or glazed over. This movie was not a romantic one sided point of view. It showed the death penalty as it is and begs audiences of all beliefs to think and feel.