TRUMAN CAPOTE’s In Cold Blood is one of the great works of legal literature. The film Capote, for which Philip Seymour Hoffman deservedly won this year’s Oscar for Best Actor, portrays the author when he was writing his account of the crime and punishment of two murderers. It is now one of the great works of legal cinema.

At about 1am on November 15, 1959, a Kansas farmer, Herbert W. Clutter, his wife, Bonnie Mae, their daughter, Nancy, 16, and their son, Kenyon, 14, were shot dead at their home. Mr Clutter also had his throat cut. In March 1960 Richard Hickock, 31, and Perry Smith, 28, were each convicted on four counts of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death.

The evidence against them was overwhelming. They confessed that Hickock (in prison for another offence) had (inaccurately) been informed by a fellow inmate that Mr Clutter kept large sums of cash on his farm. On his release from prison, Hickock told Smith that he planned to rob the farm and kill anyone present, and Smith agreed to help him. At the home of Hickock’s parents, police found the shotgun and knife used in the murders. The defendants had driven to Mexico where they sold a radio and binoculars which they took from the Clutter house. Shotgun shells and rope used in the murders were found at a location specified by the defendants. They called no substantial evidence on their behalf.

In Cold Blood is a work of profound psychological insight and emotional empathy into the origin, method and futility of a despicable crime. Capote focuses on the research and writing of this modern morality play, with evil destroying good. Based on the compelling biography of Truman Capote by Gerald Clarke, the film identifies with wit and intelligence the dilemma of an author who needs to befriend criminals in order to belittle and betray them.

Truman Capote understood, but did not sympathise with, the defendants. When Perry Smith blamed his unhappy upbringing for his conduct, Truman Capote indignantly told him: “I had one of the worst childhoods in the world, and I’m a pretty decent, law-abiding citizen.” The author assisted them in their battles to avoid execution, but only for so long as he needed to obtain all necessary information to convict them of mindless brutality and to hang their reputation for posterity.

The law reports strikingly record the devotion of the legal system to ensuring due process for men plainly guilty of a barbaric crime. In July 1961 the Supreme Court of Kansas dismissed an appeal against the convictions. The United States Supreme Court refused to intervene. The local Bar association then appointed a new lawyer for the defendants. He reported to the Kansas Supreme Court that Hickock and Smith had not received a fair trial. The court was “disturbed” by this report and allowed fresh habeas corpus proceedings to assess whether an injustice may have occurred.

In January 1962 the Kansas Supreme Court asked its retired chief justice to conduct an inquiry into the matter. He noted that the truth of the confessions was not disputed in the evidence before him, and nor was it suggested that they were obtained by improper means. He concluded that the defendants received a fair trial and were properly convicted. In July 1962 the Supreme Court of Kansas agreed, and the habeas corpus proceedings were dismissed. In 1963 the United States Supreme Court refused to intervene.

Now that they had exhausted their remedies in the State courts, Hickock and Smith wrote to the Chief Judge of the United States federal District Court for Kansas, suggesting that they had not received a fair trial because their counsel were incompetent. The court appointed two lawyers to represent them in federal habeas corpus proceedings. Their complaints were rejected on their merits after a hearing in the District Court.

An appeal to the Court of Appeal for the Tenth Circuit was dismissed in July 1964. Judge Pickett pointed out that criticism of trial counsel ignored the problems they faced in defending clients against whom the case was overwhelming. Any defence was inevitably “grasping at the proverbial straw”. The right to legal representation “does not contemplate that miracles will be performed”. In January 1965 the United States Supreme Court declined to intervene, and denied a final petition for a rehearing on March 1, 1965.

Hickock and Perry were hanged on April 14, 1965. Truman Capote was present. The film, like the book whose creation it describes, convincingly argues that, despite the appalling crimes they committed in cold blood, Hickock and Smith were human beings who should not have been hanged by