Dead Man Walking (1995)

With an Oscar-winning performance from Susan Sarandon, Dead Man Walking (written and directed by Tim Robbins) is pretty harrowing. It traces the relationship between death-row inmate Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn) and the local nun to whom he turns for spiritual guidance in the days leading up to his scheduled execution. Matt has been convicted of the rape and murder of two young lovers and is awaiting execution by lethal injection on death row. Sarandon plays Sister Helen Prejean (on whose book the film is based) with all the angst the part requires; she's a nun who has devoted herself to God and to helping the less fortunate, Prejean faces a moral crisis as she tries to reconcile her anti-death penalty views with the truth of Poncelet's actions and the pain felt by the victims' families. Heavy duty, thought-provoking and duly heaped with Oscar nominations.

Bad hair day throughout for Sean Penn. Cameo role for a young Jack Black as one of Poncelet's brothers. Excellent final credits song by Bruce Springsteen.

An eye for an eye? IMDB 7.6/10

Rather liked the following parody, which I found while picture researching:

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wrote the following poem in 1899,  but it is unconnected with the term used in US prisons. They hail me as one living, But don’t they know That I have died of late years, Untombed although? I am but a shape that stands here, A pulseless mould, A pale past picture, screening Ashes gone cold. Not at a minute’s warning, Not in a loud hour, For me ceased Time’s enchantments In hall and bower. There was no tragic transit, No catch of breath, When silent seasons inched me On to this death. . . . A Troubadour-youth I rambled With Life for lyre, The beats of being raging In me like a fire. But when I practised eyeing The goal of men, It iced me, and I perished A little then. When passed my friend, my kinsfolk Through the last Door, And left me standing bleakly, I died yet more; And when my Love’s heart kindled In hate of me, Wherefore I knew not, died I One more degree. And if when I died fully I cannot say, And changed into the corpse-thing I am to-day. Yet is it that, though whiling The time somehow In walking, talking, smiling, I live not now.