See Rivera, 915 F.2d at 282; United States ex rel. A police technician discovered that there was a latent fingerprint of value on a plastic telephone card contained in the purse. The fact that Butler was available to testify and subject to cross-examination by the state supports the argument made here that his confession should have been admitted as a matter of constitutional law. Butler's confession meets that test, as well. Brenton Butler was accused for murdering Maryann Stephens who was walking with her husband to their hotel room after breakfast, when he supposedly approached Ms. Stephens and demanded for her purse at gun point, then proceeded to lift his gun and shot her in the face, leaving Mr. Stephens as the eye witness to the. The trial judge adhered to his earlier ruling and held that the proffered confession by Brenton Butler was inadmissible in evidence. As Chief Justice Burger explained, The accuracy and truthfulness of [the juvenile's] testimony were key elements in the State's case against petitioner. The gist of this testimony was that Jermel Williams told Bryant that he and Curtis had robbed a woman, and Curtis got mad at Williams for telling the story. [5] The documentary follows Butler's defense team as they build their case for his innocence. [4], After Butler's acquittal, his attorneys tipped the Sheriff's Office to two other suspects, Juan Curtis and Jermel Williams. He did not identify Curtis as the assailant at that time.
Four years after he was acquitted in the slaying of a Georgia tourist, Brenton Butler took the witness stand Tuesday and described being beaten by a police . [1] State Attorney Harry Shorstein decided to prosecute the case. February 24, 2018. The cops figured they had it solved in record time.
[1] After the grand jury investigation, the Sheriff's office began taping interrogations of juvenile suspects, and implemented other procedural changes recommended by the jury. Best MatchPowered by Whitepages Premium Brenton G Butler Knightstown, IN AGE 20s AGE 20s Brenton G Butler Knightstown, IN Aliases Brent N Butler Jacksonville station News4Jax reported that Butler was arrested and charged in May 2000 with killing a Georgia tourist at a motel. It did not help him that Florida generally recognizes an exception for declarations against penal interest, because the exception could not be employed under the facts of his case. Brenton is the son of a middle-aged, middle-class black couple: his mother Latrice (King) works at a private school full of snotty white kids; his father Isaiah sweeps blood at a slaughterhouse. The police, prosecutors, courts, prisons an .more Get A Copy been identified 15 Brandon but that's not to say one who shot his wife tomorrow so I was after the murder every description that was given By Stephens to the police officers to Butler is a, A Murder on a Sunday Morning is a documentary that follows the trial of 15 year old Brenton Butler in order to prove his innocence by displaying the ethical issues behind the case. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. They supplied a photograph of Butler with bruises on his face, which they claimed was the result of the interrogation. This argument misses the point. There was no evidence presented to the jury in Curtis' case to prove or even suggest that Butler's confession was coerced. The prosecutor must have believed then that Butler's confession was reliable. For example, in Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 94 S.Ct. Itchanged him. That teenager becomes the center of a politically-charged confrontation between law enforcement and those they are meant to protect, but the story of the real Brenton Butler is far different from the story seen in Seven Seconds. Jablonski Jablonski was sentenced to 364 days of jail time (how disrespectful to not even round it up to a year). Indeed, the Florida courts have consistently applied the constitutional analysis in Chambers, despite the exception in section 90.804(2)(c), Florida Statutes, for declarations against penal interest. Mrs. Stephens did not move fast enough, so he pulled out a chrome revolver that he had found several days earlier. Copyright 2023, Thomson Reuters. The Herschel Walker Unite Georgia bus tour rolled into Cleveland Wednesday morning to a large crowd of supporters in his bid for one of Georgia's U.S. Senate seats. All of the negatives are from before he took over. A section of the former Mount Vernon Mills in Alto will become a further processing facility for Hodie Meats Inc. now that it has received Banks County Commission approval. A flash flood watch has been posted for most of northeast Georgia. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. According to Johnson, Curtis said that the woman threw coffee at him, and when the coffee hit his neck, the gun went off. Studies show that teens are especially vulnerable to making false confessions with terrible consequences. Documentary Crime Oscar-winning documentary that documents a murder trial in which a 15-year-old African-American is wrongfully accused of a 2000 murder in Jacksonville, Florida. During the investigation of a shooting death outside a motel in 2000, police arrested 15-year-old Brenton Butler and charged him with the murder. But we could not say that a confession is neutralized merely because it was recanted. The same is true of Butler's confession in this case. In the state's case in chief, the prosecutor called James Stephens, the victim's husband. Its taken just three days to seat a jury of 12 people in the tax fraud trial of Donald Trumps company surprising even some people involved in the case who thought it would take at least a week to find an impartial panel in heavily Democratic New York City. The government should always think that people was innocent before they found guilty and it supposed not to have privilege above the law. This made him angry, so he demanded her wallet. I find no reversible error in the trial court's exclusion of the evidence in question and would affirm the judgment of conviction below. The case also was the subject of the Oscar-winning HBO documentary Murder on a Sunday Morning. 1038. 4/2/2002. Butler had been identified by the victim's husband and he had confessed to police officers that he shot Mrs. Stephens. However, in 2004 appeals court found that the exclusion of the confession denied Curtis' constitutional right to a fair trial, and granted a retrial. Murder on a Sunday Morning follows the trial of Brenton Butler, a 15-year-old black male who is charged with robbing and murdering Mary Ann Stephens, a 65-year-old white woman, in the parking lot of a hotel in Jacksonville, Florida. After he spent months in prison, a jury deliberated less than an hour before acquitting him. "Acquitted of Killing, Man Testifies in Case Retrial." St. Petersburg Times (Florida), 13 October 2004. http . From hair trends to relationship advice, our daily newsletter has everything you need to sound like a person whos on TikTok, even if you arent. Butler had given a deposition in which he repudiated his earlier confession and denied that he shot Mrs. Stephens. These people, these imaginary people, took on lives of their own, and I needed to do them right by finishing their story.. The confession is corroborated by the fact that Mr. Stephens positively identified Butler as the assailant. As it turned out then, Curtis was no better off than Chambers. Curtis presented evidence that Mr. Stephens had identified Butler, and the state countered that evidence by providing an alibi for Butler. A few days later, the trial court adjudicated him guilty and sentenced him to life on the murder charge and fifty years on the robbery charge. For the investigators and the media it's just another messed-up youth, just another wasted life. It is true that certain aspects of Butler's statement, such as the location of the purse and the kind of weapon used, were inconsistent with other facts, but the question is not whether there is some evidence casting doubt on the confession. Although it's been 18 years since the real Butler was arrested, concerns about how institutions treat marginalized populations still abound. He was precluded, albeit for a slightly different reason, from calling the declarant to the witness stand and confronting him with the confession. The Brenton Butler case was a 2000 murder case in Jacksonville, Florida. The detectives also can appeal it to the Civil Service Board or an arbitrator. With such exposureand intense local media coverage, the arrest drew much unflattering attention to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Today, that is now a rule that officers must perform before questioning anyone taken in. Florida, una turista de 65 aos es asesinada por una bala en la cabeza delante de su esposo, por un joven afroamericano que le roba su cartera. The innocent boy was 15-year-old Brenton Butler, whose trial for the slaying of a Georgia tourist provided the story for Murder on a Sunday Morning. Get the latest news, stats, videos, highlights and more about guard Brenton Butler on ESPN. They were approached by a man who demanded Mrs. Stephens' purse. As reported in a 2000 article in The Guardian, a Florida teen named Brenton Butler was arrested while on his way to submit a job application to a local Blockbuster video store. ``It was a long way from being our best example of what our detectives could do. Yet, all other things being equal, the availability of the declarant might be the very thing that requires the court to admit the confession as a matter of constitutional law, despite the Evidence Code.
She knows, she says, how tough the job can be. [2] Curtis was subsequently found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He made the confession just a few hours after the murder. (National) by "New York Times Upfront"; News, opinion and commentary General interest Murder Police brutality Personal narratives Then the police should learn how and when to draw the line, when they are tested to their limits., Also, Patriot Act gave the FBI to increase entitled to spy on people which strip human rights. Learn more about FindLaws newsletters, including our terms of use and privacy policy. We conclude that the trial court erred in excluding evidence that another person had confessed to the crime. He argued that under the circumstances of the case, the exclusion of the confession would deprive him of his constitutional right to a fair trial. [1] During the subsequent investigation, police picked up Butler, a 15-year-old student at Englewood High School who was on his way to submit a job application to a local Blockbuster Video. See Grim v. State, 841 So.2d 455, 464 (Fla.2003); Sliney v. State, 699 So.2d 662, 670 (Fla.1997); Gudinas v. State, 693 So.2d 953, 965 (Fla.1997); Hartley v. State, 686 So.2d 1316, 1321 (Fla.1996); Lightbourne v. State, 644 So.2d 54, 57 (Fla.1994). Trending Videos The do's and don'ts of. Bryant questioned Curtis about Williams' statement, and Curtis generally admitted to Bryant that he had committed a robbery. McDonald's confessions therefore did not qualify under the exception. The book shows the effectthat months of confinementon Jason and his family, and it shows the mindset of one of the detectives, who is also Black, as the case moves toward a judge and a jury. Like Butler, he is 15 when he's picked up by police after a woman from Georgia is shot at a nearby hotel. This requirement is also found in rule 804(b)(3) of the Federal Rules of Evidence and in typical exceptions in other states. And so do a surprising number of innocent people--teenagers in particular. Took Brenton Butler into the woods and punched him multiple times in stomach and face Threatened Brenton Butler Used intimidation Name three things the prosecution had to present its case. Note: Brenton should have five stars. The final part of the test in Chambers, that the witness is available for cross-examination, is the most perplexing. The Butler case opened up discussion about the video taping of police interrogations. Later that day, Brenton Butler, a black male who was walking back from applying for ajob at blockbusters was accused and arrested for this crime. At the time of Chambers' trial, Mississippi had a declaration against interest exception to the hearsay rule, but it applied only to statements against pecuniary interest, not to statements against penal interest. 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