Death Penalty

• Dead Man Walking (the movie) (film by Tim Robbins based on the book by Sister Helen Prejean)
• Thin Blue Line (film regarding the wrongful conviction of Randall Dale Adams in Texas)
• My Cousin Vinny (a lighthearted fictional view of a capital trial in Alabama)
• Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1994 documentary about media exploitation, police corruption, and some very ineffective assistance of counsel)

Prisons and  Jails

• Shawshank Redemption (1994 fictional account of a
  man's "adjustment" to incarceration, based on Stephen King novel)
• I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (influential 1932
  movie about chain gang brutality in Georgia)
• Brubaker
  (1980 film with Robert Redford as reform-minded prison warden of corrupt and
  brutal prison)