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The command could hardly be more explicit, but its application could hardly be more troubling, raising questions and dilemmas at every turn. Capital punishment is so easy to apply to the weak and powerless and so difficult to enforce among the powerful that it raises questions of justice. Capital punishment is so distasteful for the best of people and so gratifying for the worst of people that it raises questions of decency and civilization. Capital punishment may or may not solve the problem of increasing crime, and so it raises the question of expediency.
For Christians, these questions are compounded by Jesus, who taught an ethic based on forgiveness and who in the end was the victim of the worst miscarriage of justice in the history of the world. Jesus was wrongfully executed, and His death would appear to be the final argument against capital punishment.
Capital punishment is so final it challenges everything modern. It provides for no rehabilitation. It allows for no reconsideration. It permits no recourse.
And yet the debate about capital punishment lives on. Western democracies at the end of the 20th century had all but abolished capital punishment, but in the last few years the United States has again allowed the penalty of death to be carried out.
Into this debate comes the movie Dead Man Walking. This movie is based on an autobiographical book written by a nun, Sister Helen Prejean, who became the state-appointed chaplain to two death row inmates. While the movie script is fictional, Sister Prejean collaborated with movie producer Tim Robbins to reflect her experiences.
The movie captures the audience with its realism. Susan Sarandon, who plays Sister Prejean, and Sean Penn, who plays convicted sex murderer Matthew Poncelet, draw you into the screen as if life itself was unfolding before your eyes. It is not a pleasant sight. The murder is brutal and unprovoked. The murderer is not a nice person. The lives of the victims' families disintegrate under the weight of the tragedy. Sister Prejean is quietly heroic but yet naive. It is, however, her naivete and her subsequent contact with the families of the victims in which the creative tension of the issues and the story unfold.
This is a very valuable movie for all those who are involved in the debate over capital punishment. It deals with the questions that swirl around the debate--victims' rights, human rights, guilt, innocence, racism, justice, poverty, forgiveness and revenge. And it paints these issues into a picture which we can all recognize--real people struggling for their humanity.
The movie is valuable because it defines the real issue. The question of capital punishment is finally not about the possibility of innocence, nor about revenge or social injustice. The question of capital punishment is about the right to take a human life.
Dead Man Walking presents an answer to the question of capital punishment. The answer comes from the gentle and single-minded courage of Sister Prejean: Murder is a terrible thing, but the taking of life--even the life of a self-confessed murderer--is wrong.
This is a valuable movie--even (and possibly especially) for those who (like myself) disagree with its answer. It answers the question wrongly, but it lays out the issues rightly. In a issue of this magnitude and complexity, a proper elaboration of the issues is more important than quick answers.
James Toews is senior pastor of Neighbourhood Church in Nanaimo, B.C.
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