Racial injustice -- on death row

Rating: Null/10 (10 December 1999)

Michael Clarke Duncan portrays one of his breakthrough roles as an African American man on death row for the murder of two young girls. The setting, in the South of the 1930s, shows how racial injustice among African American males on death row, where the victim was white, have proved the point that capital punishment was arbitrary and capricious until the Furman v. Georgia decision in 1972.
The portrayal of Coffee by Michael Clarke Duncan shows that one could have the power to heal, and his portrayal of a death row inmate is similar to the character of Tom Robinson in To Kill A Mockingbird, where the similar circumstances of an African American male tried through the courts ended with a guilty verdict, and a death sentence handed down by the judge. The death row scene was sad, since it was just another tale of how the criminal justice system singles out minorities, when their crime victims were white.