Murder On A Sunday Morning Summary

The film Murder on a Sunday Morning was a murder case in Jacksonville involving a 15 year old teenager being accused of 1st Degree murder and theft. In the video, it showed the process of the trial and both sides of the case. The lawyer in the video was defending Brenton Butler, the person accused of the incident and the lawyer truly believed that Brenton was not the person that committed the crime. Patrick McGuiness, the lawyer, went out of his way to not only prevent Brenton from serving life in jail, but to also get the real criminal that committed murder. In the end, McGuiness was able to prove to the jury that Brenton was not guilty and that the real murderer was still on the loose.
After hearing the verdict, I was not surprised at all. …show more content…
At that time, Brenton was only 15, and he also looked very young too. The next thing that convinced me that he was the fact that the purse that was stolen off the victim was on the complete opposite side of the city. Brenton said that he was walking around the crime scene and for him to run to the other side of the city to throw away the purse didn’t fit. These testifies the homicide detectives were telling also didn’t add up and were almost contradicting themselves. The story that Detective Glover was exclaiming didn’t make any sense at all. The way that Glover was portraying Brenton was also skeptical. Detective Glover said that Brenton was so happy to see him and gave him a hug, while Brenton’s mother exclaimed that Brenton does not do that and he does not approach people like that and that he has an introverted personality. That was shown in the footage where I saw Brenton’s mannerism when he was in the courtroom. He isolated himself for almost all of the trial. Another reason why I wasn’t surprised was the lack of evidence the Detectives had, compared to Patrick McGuiness. McGuiness seemed like he had a reasonable …show more content…
From the video, it seemed like the witness had post identification feedback effect which is “The tendency for biased feedback after identification to distort the memory of eyewitnesses” (Costanzo & Krauss, 2012). The witness was certain that Brenton was the murderer even after Patrick McGuiness was explaining that Brenton couldn’t have been the suspect. The witness was so confident that Brenton was the suspect that he was describing what Brenton was wearing that day when he killed his wife, but there was a main problem with that. The problem was that he was incorrect on what Brenton was wearing. He was wearing a dark colored shirt that had the brand Nautica, written on the front in big letters. The witness said that the shirt had a logo on the back of the shirt but he did not know the brand and wasn’t paying attention to that. He stayed with his statement and still believe that Brenton was the killer even after McGuiness showed him that he was not indeed the killer. The themes showed in the film were very consistent throughout the entire film. The main reason why Brenton was in that situation was due to these themes being portrayed from the detectives and the witness of the crime. Overall, the whole scenario could have been avoided if the police were more determined to search instead of arresting an innocent teenager from an