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Murder on a Sunday Morning
- Director: Jean-Xavier de Lestrade
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Description
The genesis of this Oscar-winning documentary feature was one of the more appalling miscarriages of justice in recent American history. In May of 2000, Mary Ann Stephens, a 65-year-old tourist from Georgia, was shot and killed by a black assailant in Jacksonville, FL. Anxious not to damage their tourist trade, the Jacksonville police rushed out and picked up the first black "suspect" who happened to be available: 15-year-old Brendon Butler, who at the time of his arrest, was en route to a job interview. The grieving husband of of the murder victim, who had glimpsed the killer from a distance, was virtually coerced by the arresting officers into identifying Butler as the guilty party -- and later, thanks to the strong-arm tactics of his interrogators, and without benefit of counsel, the boy confessed to a crime which he did not commit. Brash, chain-smoking public defender Pat McGuinness, sensing that the prosecution's case stank to high heaven, proceeded to mount a courtroom defense for Butler which may well survive the decades as a textbook case of brilliant jurisprudence -- while the trial itself will undoubtedly forever serve as a cautionary example of the perils and pitfalls and prejudice of "swift justice." Assembled by French documentary filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, this 111-minute feature was originally released under the title Un coupable ideal. As Murder on a Sunday Morning, the film was afforded a Los Angeles theatrical showing in September of 2001 to qualify for the Academy Awards; most Americans, however, saw the film when it aired on the HBO cable network on April 2, 2002. Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Features
- Genre: Culture & Society
- Category: Biography, Law & Crime, Race & Ethnicity, Social Issues
- Theme: Clearing One's Name, Miscarriage of Justice
- Release Date: April 29, 2003
- Rating: NR (Not Rated)Rating Opens in New Window - Adult Situations
- Studio: Docurama
- Supporting Actors: Pat McGuinness
- Director: Jean-Xavier de Lestrade
- Picture Format: Letterbox
- Run Time: 1 hr 51 min
- Format: DVD
Additional Information
- DPCI: 246-03-9633
- ASIN: B002OXMZAY
- Catalog #: 11587290
- Item can not be gift wrapped.
Shipping & Policies
- You may return this item to any Target store.Opens in New Window
- Shipping & Delivery InformationOpens in New Window
- Estimated Ship Dimensions : 7.56 inches length x 5.48 inches width x 0.6 inches height
- Estimated Ship Weight: 0.22 pound.
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Expert Reviews
Filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade did not set out to make this stunning film about a rush to judgment; he was in Jacksonville on another project when this case broke, and fortunately, he was able to line up cooperation with several principals, as well as getting his camera inside the courtroom where Brendon Butler was on trial. Butler comes off as a poster child for racial profiling, but he's an unformed teenager. The real star here is public defender Pat McGuinness. Never far from a glass of whiskey, McGuinness comes off like a character out of a John Grisham novel, the hard-working, lone-wolf attorney who knows he's got a miscarriage of justice by the tail and won't let go. He's not flamboyant, just determined and amazingly tactful; he ingratiates himself with the local police to get important evidence and then lowers the boom on them during the trial, making it clear that a detective was much more interested in closing a case than in getting the right man. Interestingly, that detective, who intimidated Butler with a well-administered beating, is black, so the case is not all that, um, black-and-white. De Lestrade lets some scenes play out a tad too long, but otherwise this is a model documentary that lets its amazing story tell itself without resorting to overly dramatic narration or trumped-up visuals. Not as artfully presented as Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line, it is also the kind of heart-in the-right-place film that almost always wins the Oscar for Documentary Feature -- "almost," since Morris' film wasn't even nominated. Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
