Was Capote successful in sympathizing with Perry Smith? Why or why not?

Sympathy is
probably the wrong word, as I don't know thatactually felt sorry for Perry Smith, but he did
empathize with him.  That is, both personally and in his writing, he could understand and tried
to express what it was like for a person to be facing the death penalty.

The
greater achievement of the book is getting the true story of what happened, but he also, for
perhaps the first time in literature, put a human face on the condemned.  He at least provoked
some thought about the realities of capital punishment in a country that overwhelmingly
supported the death penalty at the time.