Night of the Hunter

Night of the hunter is a very powerful movie that stands to this day as being influential with its debate on Hate Vs Love. For a movie being produced so very long ago, I feel as though it was very good. There is only one thing I am confused about entirely and that is that toward the end of the move the Antgonist is caught by the cops and they begin to arrest him but John begins to scream at them to stop and runs over to give him the money he wanted. Throughout the ENTIRE movie this man is trying to torment two very young kids as well as Chase them through town to take ten thousand dollars cash they have hidden in a doll that doesn't belong to him. Further more whenever he pops up, John takes a stand to protect his sister and angrily avoid the man but once he's captured he feels bad? That to me makes the movie a little bad because of how pathetic the ending turned out to be. Furthermore in court John was asked if he was the man who killed his mother (and he was) yet John couldn't confess that the man did it. I feel as though he should've been sentenced to death and taken away for his actions.