This past week, the film Capote (2005) was shown on television — and while the name suggests that the movie covers the life of famed author Truman Capote, that’s not the case. What the movie focuses upon is Capote’s involvement with two men who were executed by the State of Kansas for the killings of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas back in the late 1950s.
For those – like me – who are interested in how the death penalty is presented to America not only in the media and in our legislation but in our popular culture, I found the movie to be important.
Not only does it provide an excellent perspective on how the trial and appellate process can cover years and years as the case winds its way through both the state and federal systems, but it reveals so much about the prisoners themselves. How they spend years and years in small cells, a punishment in and of itself — and in Perry Smith’s case, the movies also gives food for thought about how a small boy could grow up to end his life by a hangman’s noose.
And the execution of Perry Smith is shown in Capote. In the 1960s, Kansas still executed prisoners by hanging. You see the entirety of the process, and for those who wonder about those last moments – the film strives for accuracy. There is the harness, there is the hood placed over the prisoner’s head (for the benefit of the witnesses many argue, as opposed to the condemned), there is the sound of the latch being thrown and the body falling down, swaying in the open air.
It’s a memorable scene in a memorable film.
And, as for hanging as a form of capital punishment, we don’t see that today. Today, only two states still allow for hanging and then, only as an option the lethal injection. (That’s Delaware and Washington.)
Why not? Hanging someone to kill them is tricky business. If the state doesn’t do its math right, calculating the weight of the individual and comparing it against the length of the drop and the strength of the rope, then the condemned does not die by a swift break of the neck but instead slowly suffocates — which is said to be a very messy and painful process.
In Capote (2005), the execution goes smoothly and Truman Capote (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) watches without a word and then walks away. Afterwards, he completes In Cold Blood — a telling of the Clutter killings, the investigation and arrest of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, following the judicial process through their deaths.
And, of course, In Cold Blood is a must read for those dealing with the issue of capital punishment in this country — and watching Capote, as this important book is being created, makes you want to pull that important book off the shelf and re-read it. Which I, for one, am going to do.