I think the sequence delineates the social context in which the film takes place, and its attitudes towards justice and violence: the prisoners encourage Johnson to shoot Hopper, and he hesitates; but after realising that he can get away with killing the man, he (unjustifiably) shoots Hopper in the back as he's running away. Eastwood looks on, and we guess he finds Johnson's actions distasteful. It's a mirror of the opening sequence in which Eastwood is lynched, showing the power of the mob who bay for violence (the later sequence depicting the group hanging, depicted as a public spectacle, has a similar subtext) and the relationship between the law and violence, which is the overarching theme of the film.
The scene with Hopper also seems to underscore the outsider status of hippie culture, as Hopper's character, the Prophet, seems a thinly-veiled representation of a late 1960s hippie. As such, it could be said that the sequence is a (perhaps exploitative) attempt to show the relationship between the film and the period in which it was made: in other words, the sequence could have suggested for 1960s audiences that the film is not just a historical picture but a film whose themes were relevant to 1968.
'What does it matter what you say about people?'
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958).
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