Watchworthy
The Best Capital Punishment Movies
List Rules
Only movies featuring capital punishment.
A list of the best capital punishment movies ever made, ranked by movie fans with film trailers when available. This death penalty movie list is ordered by popularity, so only the greatest movies about capital punishment are at the top of the list. If there are any great movies about capital punishment you believe we missed, please feel free to add them to the list yourself. The films on this list are the most famous capital punishment movies of all time, so use it to find some movies that you haven't seen already. Click on these capital punishment movie titles for more information about the films.The list you're viewing is made up of different items like Dance with a Stranger and 10 Rillington Place.This list answers the questions, "What are the best capital punishment movies?" and "What is the greatest capital punishment movie of all time?" Various bits of information are included with these popular capital punishment movies, such as who directed them, when they were released and who starred in the films. Whether you're watching these capital punishment movies on DVD, Blu-ray or streaming, these good capital punishment movies can be enjoyed no matter what.
list ordered by
- Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) walked the mile with a variety of cons. He had never encountered someone like John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a massive black man convicted of brutally killing a pair ...more
- As death row inmate Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn) nears his execution date, he calls upon Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) to help him with one last appeal, maintaining that he is innocent of the ...more
- Shortly after moving to Florida, longtime prostitute Aileen Wuornos (Charlize Theron) meets young and reserved Selby Wall (Christina Ricci) and a romance blossoms. When a john (Lee Tergesen) attempts ...more
- Young lawyer Adam Hall (Chris O'Donnell) launches a legal appeal for his racist grandfather, Sam Cayhall (Gene Hackman), a former Ku Klux Klan member he has never met. Accused of killing two young ...more
- Hank, an embittered racist prison guard working on death row, begins an unlikely, emotionally charged sexual relationship with Leticia, a Black woman and wife of a man sentenced to death. The affair ...more
- Ex-tennis pro Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) wants to have his wealthy wife, Margot (Grace Kelly), murdered so he can get his hands on her inheritance. When he discovers her affair with Mark Halliday ...more
- David Gale (Kevin Spacey) is a man who has tried hard to live by his principles but in a bizarre twist of fate, this devoted father, popular professor and respected death penalty opponent finds ...more
- After a gang of men unsuccessfully attempts to lynch him for a cattle rustling crime he did not commit, Jed Cooper (Clint Eastwood) is saved by marshal Dave Bliss (Ben Johnson) and judge Adam Fenton ...more
- Selma is a Czech immigrant, a single mother working in a factory in rural America. Her salvation is passion for music, specifically, the all-singing, all-dancing numbers found in classic Hollywood ...more
- After married man John Proctor (Daniel Day-Lewis) decides to break off his affair with his young lover, Abigail Williams (Winona Ryder), she leads other local girls in an occult rite to wish death ...more
- Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson) is a heartbroken black father who avenges his daughter's brutal rape by shooting the bigoted men responsible for the crime as they are on their way to trial. He ...more
![Chicago]()
12Nightclub sensation Velma (Catherine Zeta-Jones) murders her philandering husband, and Chicago's slickest lawyer, Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), is set to defend her. But when Roxie (Renée Zellweger) ...more- A dark tale of infidelity and murder, crime and punishment. Set in a small northern California town of the late 40s, the film portrays Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), a barber dissatisfied with his ...more
- In this fact-based film, British working class teens Derek Bentley (Christopher Eccleston) and Chris Craig (Paul Reynolds) take to behaving like the film noir antiheroes they idolize, and Chris ...more
- Paul Armstrong (Sean Connery), a law professor who staunchly fights the death penalty, is lured into defending a death row inmate, Bobby Earl Ferguson (Blair Underwood), convicted of rape and murder. ...more
- Journalist Steve Everett (Clint Eastwood) has been sober two months, but things are still going badly. Steve's marriage to Barbara (Diane Venora) is barely holding together, and his editor (Denis ...more
- A seemingly model citizen living in mid-century London, John Christie (Richard Attenborough) is actually a killer. Masquerading as a doctor, he convinces guileless women that he can cure whatever ...more
![Clemency]()
18Clemency is a 2019 American drama film directed by Chinonye Chukwu. A Death Row prison warden, Bernadine Williams (Alfre Woodard) makes a connection to the prisoner she is sanctioned to execute.- Just Mercy is a 2019 American biographical drama film directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, based on the memoir by Bryan Stevenson. A distinguished civil rights attorney, Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. ...more
- Albert Pierrepoint (Timothy Spall) finds great success as Britain's most famous public executioner, and his notoriety rises to a new level after he is selected to hang Nazi war criminals after the ...more
- There Is No Evil (aka Sheytân vojūd nadârad) is a 2020 Iranian drama film directed by Mohammad Rasoulof. Four people have to deal with the death penalty in Iran, each in their own way. A family man ...more
- A man returns to his home town after a lengthy absence spent fighting in the US Civil War. Although his apparent character transformation arouses his wife's and others' suspicions, everyone is ...more
- Stauffenberg is a Germano–Austrian TV film released in 2004 by Das Erste, about Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The film was awarded "best ...more
- A young lawyer (Rob Morrow) is assigned to a clemency case for Cindy Liggett (Sharon Stone), a woman on death row for first degree murder. As he investigates her case the two develop a friendship. ...more
- No Man's Land: The Rise of Reeker is a 2008 American horror film about a sheriff and his son who are tracking down a group of bank robbers on their way to Mexico, only to discover that they are being ...more
