In this confession, he said that he was hungry and had no money, so he decided to approach Mr. and Mrs. Stephens to ask them if they had any spare change. [1][2], After the case, the State Attorney's Office launched a grand jury investigation into the conduct of the officers and prosecutors, while the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office began an internal affairs investigation. Later in the afternoon, Butler told the officers that he had shot the victim by accident. Al S. 2023 www.jacksonville.com. Brenton's mother, Melissa, and his brother, Brandon, also testified that Brenton was home at the time of the murder. And so do a surprising number of innocent people--teenagers in particular. In May 2000, two tourists from Georgia were outside the Ramada Inn. Brenton just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973), the Supreme Court concluded that the defendant should have been allowed to present evidence that someone else had confessed to the crime. This made him angry, so he demanded her wallet. Butler was picked up by police in May 2000 and taken to a Southside motel, where he was identified by the husband of Mary Ann Stephens of Toccoa, Ga., who was fatally shot during a robbery. She said she wrote the book to honor him, in a way, and there's a character an older police officer who treats Jason with compassion who is close to what her father was like. For the investigators and the media it's just another messed-up youth, just another wasted life. By using his name, the Netflix series is recognizing a then-teenager who came close to being punished for a crime because of the shortcomings of our justice system. Butler, un adolescent noir de 15 ans, avoue le crime, admettant qu'il lui a tir dessus aprs lui avoir demand son sac main. According to Johnson, Curtis said that the woman threw coffee at him, and when the coffee hit his neck, the gun went off. [5] The documentary follows Butler's defense team as they build their case for his innocence. Butler was acquitted by a jury. Curtis presented evidence that Mr. Stephens had identified Butler, and the state countered that evidence by providing an alibi for Butler. Officer Williams testified in the proffer that Butler had been advised of his rights and that, at first, he denied that he had anything to do with the murder. The Brenton Butler case was a 2000 murder case in Jacksonville, Florida. A grand jury determined that there had been no "criminal wrongdoing" on the part of the city, but changes to the department's interrogation policy were instituted. "Ten years later, the Butler trial's legacy remains palpable. According to Williams, Curtis said that he was going to snatch a purse. 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. Betty Brenton of Foxboro received a big surprise when her children made an exhibit of her own art at the Happy Hollow Gallery in Mansfield and hosted a reception attended by a . Acquitted man is witness at retrial. Brenton is a very friendly and talented barber. After they returned, Butler made a written confession, which differed in some details from his oral confession. State Attorney Harry Shorstein and Sheriff Nat Glover did admit after the fact that Butler had been wrongfully arrested and charged. However, it's not at all accidental that Seven Seconds is using Butler's exact name. SEVEN SECONDS Review: Episode 8-10. Hailey murders the two white men because they raped and assaulted his 10-year-old daughter, Tanya Hailey. Here again, Curtis was no better off than Chambers. Il a reu l'Oscar du meilleur film documentaire lors de la Crmonie des Oscars 2002. Andy Joiner and 20 days each for detectives Duane Darnell and Jim Williams. I find no reversible error in the trial court's exclusion of the evidence in question and would affirm the judgment of conviction below. Because Bryant was evasive, the trial judge allowed the prosecutor to read portions of his previous grand jury testimony. Get the latest news, stats, videos, highlights and more about guard Brenton Butler on ESPN. With such exposureand intense local media coverage, the arrest drew much unflattering attention to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. ``It was a long way from being our best example of what our detectives could do. 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. I would have notified the parents of Brenton of his whereabouts before interrogating him. Looking for a suspect, the police grabbed the first convenient person they spotted: a 15-year-old kid named Brent Butler. See Morton v. State, 689 So.2d 259 (Fla.1997), receded from on other grounds by Rodriguez v. State, 753 So.2d 29 (Fla.2000). 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.
When the police officers informed him that he had been identified by the victim's husband, he started crying and said, If that's the case, I need a lawyer. Butler asked to speak with the officers again that afternoon, but again he denied that he had committed the offense. They heard from the defense that Mr. Stephens originally identified Butler as the shooter and that he was positive in his identification. When asked if he could identify the man who shot his wife, Mr. Stephens said that he could make an identification if he could see the man's legs. 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. Although Brenton Butler was ultimately found not guilty by a jury, the due process which was not afforded to him, the torture from the police and the anguish of spending six months in prison for a crime he had absolutely nothing to do with, all because he was a black male in the vicinity of a cop on the day of a crime is proof positive of the His rapid acquittal spawned a grand jury probe, an Oscar-winning documentary and the conviction of two other men. Free Online Library: Brenton Butler didn't do it: but he did confess. Confession Netflix provided Bustle the following statement from showrunner Veena Sud: The real Butler's story became fairly well known, having become nationally recognized when it became the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary Murder On A Sunday Morning. The murder case that Brigance takes on involves two Caucasian men who were murdered by an African-American named, Carl Lee Hailey. Brenton Butler (2000) Butler, 15, became a poster child for police corruption after his coerced confession by Jacksonville police led to his acquittal, lawsuits, changes in interrogation policies . Butler had given a deposition in which he repudiated his earlier confession and denied that he shot Mrs. Stephens. Now the state argues that the confession fails to meet the test of Chambers because it is unreliable, but the state is plainly not in a good position to make this argument. Butler's confession meets that test, as well. Nor is the due process problem identified in Chambers resolved merely because Florida recognizes an exception to the hearsay rule for declarations against penal interest. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a better case for corroboration of a confession than an eyewitness identification of the person who confessed. The Court rejected the state's argument that the confessions were inadmissible under the Mississippi hearsay rule, stating that the hearsay rule may not be applied mechanistically to defeat the ends of justice. Chambers, 410 U.S. at 302, 93 S.Ct. The same is true of Butler's confession in this case. Updated: 6:42 AM EDT May 27, 2004. Delegal said she published it herself after rejections from small publishers who said they liked the story and her writing,but told her they wanted "authentic voices.". Brenton Butler We found 14 records for Brenton Butler in IN, FL and 8 other states. 1105, 39 L.Ed.2d 347 (1974), the United States Supreme Court held that a defendant had a constitutional right to impeach a juvenile by showing that he was on probation, even though an Alaska statute prohibited disclosure of that fact. Mrs. Stephens did not move fast enough, so he pulled out a chrome revolver that he had found several days earlier. All rights reserved. But the record does not disclose the presence of any of these factors. The victim, Mary Ann Stephens, was shot in the head at point-blank range. He also explained that the $91 in cash Brenton had in his possession at the time of his arrest was a payment for his work at a Burger King and that it did not come from the robbery. Brenton Butler Case Bibliography Associated Press. Tourist Murder", "Butler Family Plans $2.5 Million Civil Lawsuit", "Falsely Accused Teen Sues For $8.5 Million", "Butler Family Settles Lawsuit With City", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brenton_Butler_case&oldid=1126716534, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 10 December 2022, at 21:37. The general principle that state evidence rules must, in some instances, yield to greater principles established by the Constitution has been applied specifically to require the admission of a confession by a third party. Like Butler, he is 15 when he's picked up by police after a woman from Georgia is shot at a nearby hotel. Ninety minutes later, 15-year-old Brenton Butler is arrested. 22 de febrero 2018, 11:26 AM. [2][6] Curtis' fingerprints were found on the victim's purse, which had been recovered after the crime, but had never been tested. 2. 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 crime. Alex Murdaugh and his family long dominated the legal scene in his small, rural South Carolina county where the only roads in are two lanes. If the declarant is available to testify, the confession does not qualify as a declaration against penal interest and it is excluded because it is hearsay. 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