Death Penalty Essay Research Paper While Last

Death Penalty Essay, Research Paper

While Last Dance isn’t strictly a gender-switched re-telling of Dead Man Walking, there are a number of obvious similarities. In this film, the death row inmate is Cindy Liggett (Sharon Stone), a woman tried and convicted for the brutal beating deaths of two high school kids. There’s no doubt that she’s guilty, and Cindy never pleads innocence, although she does claim to have been high on crack at the time of the deed. As a result of various appeals, she has been awaiting death for twelve years, and the execution order has been handed down three times. On this occasion, barring a last minute miracle, it appears that the lethal injection will be administered.

Enter Rick Hayes (Rob Morrow), a new hire at the Clemency Board. After reviewing Cindy’s case, he thinks she might have been given a raw deal — her lawyer didn’t bring up the drugs in her defense. So, after breaking through Cindy’s hard-as-nails exterior, he begins to gather evidence to obtain another stay of execution. The deeper he digs, the more he becomes emotionally involved, risking his career for the life of this friendless woman he has learned to care for.

At the center of the film are two quite selfish people Cindy Liggett (Stone) is awaiting execution for bloodily beating to death two teenagers a dozen years before.

Rich Hayes (Morrow) is a dilettante in his first real job — an attorney reviewing capital punishment cases for.

REVIEW–Possible clemency who find they have enough in common to become fast friends.

Cindy Liggett (Stone) is awaiting execution for bloodily beating to death two teenagers a dozen years before.

Rich Hayes (Morrow) is a dilettante in his first real job — an attorney reviewing capital punishment cases for possible clemency.

He’s driven by some mixture of guilt over his feckless past and the challenge of a seemingly hopeless case — Cindy is unrepentedly guilty and doesn’t want to miss her date with the execution chamber. (It’s more humane than lifelong incarceration where televisions blare game shows and soap operas incessantly, she explains.)

Rick works in an unnamed state in the Ozarks, which furnishes Stone with an annoying accent and the movie with an opportunity to exploit racial and sexual prejudices.

“I’m not beggin’ for mercy I’m not goin’ to get,” Cindy drawls to Rick. She’s savvy enough to realize the political ramifications involved in her case. It’s an election year and one of her victims was the son of a close friend of the governor — who has the power of clemency.

Rick encounters the political pressure against his crusade to get Cindy’s sentence commuted to life in prison.

The first to back Rick against the wall also becomes his staunchest ally — his boss, Sam Burns (Randy Quaid, in the most interesting role and performance of the film).

Stone’s character has been on death row for 12 years, following a pair of crack-induced murders: vicious, brutal murders of two teenage lovers. She doesn’t even want to fight the sentence anymore, but state law requires a review by a clemency board. Enter Rob Morrow as the new lawyer on the block. Morrow’s brother is the governor’s chief of staff, and he pulled strings to get the kid a break. The kid drives a Porsche. Has a stupid haircut. Wasn’t all that upstanding as a lawyer in the past. And before you know it, he develops strong, um, feelings for the convict. Why does he feel this way. Where do his emotions spring from. Hell if I know. But he fights like a hellcat, perhaps I should say overemotionalizes (in layman’s terms, “overacts”), to save her life. The battle continues up to the end of the movie, which I won’t reveal, just in case you actually sit through this thing. It’s not a hard thing to sit through, it’s just not a great way to waste your time.

I’m not fully sure if the problem is solely a bad performance on Morrow’s part, or a valiant effort to make something of a bad script — and the script is a bad one. Big death scenes should not make an audience laugh, but they did. The final scene (which I will not describe) should not make the audience keel over, but it did.

Across the board, whether from Stone, Morrow, or Peter Gallagher (playing Morrow’s brother), the performances were not entrancing. The supporting characters are all stereotypical — the southern governor up for reelection; the minority death row inmate convinced that the “white girl” is going to be the one who gets off; the bureaucrat who’s seen these cases come and go, always the same way.

That would be Randy Quaid, who begins as a stereotype and is the sole member of the cast to develop into a full-bodied character. But it isn’t enough, and frankly, my dears, I didn’t give a damn. It’s not worth very much to watch an accent in search of an emotional cacophony, which is a simple way to describe Sharon Stone’s performance.

THE GREEN MILE

But placed in such a self-important framework, a lot of what made the book tick starts to feel borderline hokey. The crux of The Green Mile centers on the relationship between Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks, in reliable, decent-guy mode), the head guard at Cold Mountain Penitentiary’s death row, and John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a seven-foot musclebound hulk sentenced to death for the rape and murder of two little girls.

As soon as Co

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