Rating: 
Summary: Put your self in this movie!
Review: Absolutely riviting. Next time you think of bashing a lawyer, think about these two public defenders. Next time you profile some less fortunate human in your mind watch this movie. Nothing is as compelling as reality. This film is tightly edited and lets itself be carried by the strength of the actual participants. Documentary at it's very best along with much fascinating supplemental material.
Rating: 
Summary: Northern Liberal's Wet Dream
Review: I feel the need to temper all these glowing reviews with a little cold reality. I'm a northern liberal mysellf so please don't dismiss me out of hand. This Documentary--an Acadamy Award winner no less--just strikes me as being a bit heavy handed in its delivary. Sure, who wouldn't feel for this kid and his family? I certainly did; but the director delivered everything in a totally black and white fasion: The cops and the one eye witness are racist crackers and the youth and his family are bible toting gospel singinging innocents wronged by a corrupt system. Yes, a story like this WOULD work well as a blockbusting-Hollywood-feel-good-movie-of-the-year. But I want more subtlty from a documentary. A perfect example of the kind of subtlety we deserve would be "Paradise Lost". In that film the directors paint a portrait of the good and evil that lurks in the innocent and "guilty" alike. We see a seemingly drugged out mother of a murdered boy flirting with the cameraman; we see the father of one of the boys suddenly looking more guilty than the acussed; we see the ring leader of the accussed more wise and knowing than the suppossedly wise and knowing elders. we are left confused and reflecting on our own guilt and innocence rather than feeling the cheap self- righteousness we feel after watching "Murder On A Sunday Afternoon". I would have like to have seen the REAL parents of the accused--not the parents the defence attorny's wanted the jury to see. I'd like to have seen the Defence attornys getting lap dances rather than only seeing them as tireless lawyer monks. I'd like to have seen one of the detectives with HIS family at church or at a back yard picnic. My point is, sure wouldn't it be great if life were this black and white--where the good and the bad stood in such sharp contrast? But unfortunatly that's the stuff of disposible Hollywood movies and shouldn't be the stuff of Acadamy Award winning documentarys.
Rating:
Summary: Great story, great characters?better than fiction!
Review: I just ordered two copies of this film: one as a belated gift for a friend who graduated from law school last year and the other to loan to any of my friends who will watch it. This is a disturbing and uplifting film. It's very disturbing, sickening, to watch an innocent person almost convicted of murder. This is not what most of us like to think about the American justice system. On the other hand, the dedication and skill of the public defenders embody the best characteristics of our system. I saw this movie at the International Documentary Association's 2002 DocuDay. This annual event is a one-day marathon showing-from 10 am until after midnight-of the year's Academy Award nominees in the documentary category. After each film there is a question and answer period with the director and others involved in the film. One of the questions to director de Lestrade was how did he know when he started filming that this would be such a gripping story with such memorable characters. (Many of the people in this film will stay in your mind for a long time.) The odds of choosing this case to film prospectively-as it unfolds-attest to the most fortuitous of circumstances. As I recall, de Lestrade was in Florida to work on another project that fell through. A friend took him to the courthouse where he saw Brenton in a courtroom just after his arrest. The boy and his family captivated de Lestrade and he petitioned the judge to allow the proceedings to be filmed. After the question and answer period, members of the audience swarmed to the front of the theatre for autographs--mainly Patrick McGuiness's. If you can't recall the last time you uttered the words "hero" and "lawyer" in the same breath, watch the two public defenders-Mr. McGuiness and his female colleague-as they swim against the tide of Brenton Butler's presumed guilt. Mr. McGuiness's earthy, eloquent comments as the case proceeds are incomparable.
Rating:
Summary: Great story, great characters¿better than fiction!
Review: I just ordered two copies of this film: one as a belated gift for a friend who graduated from law school last year and the other to loan to any of my friends who will watch it. This is a disturbing and uplifting film. It's very disturbing, sickening, to watch an innocent person almost convicted of murder. This is not what most of us like to think about the American justice system. On the other hand, the dedication and skill of the public defenders embody the best characteristics of our system. I saw this movie at the International Documentary Association's 2002 DocuDay. This annual event is a one-day marathon showing-from 10 am until after midnight-of the year's Academy Award nominees in the documentary category. After each film there is a question and answer period with the director and others involved in the film. One of the questions to director de Lestrade was how did he know when he started filming that this would be such a gripping story with such memorable characters. (Many of the people in this film will stay in your mind for a long time.) The odds of choosing this case to film prospectively-as it unfolds-attest to the most fortuitous of circumstances. As I recall, de Lestrade was in Florida to work on another project that fell through. A friend took him to the courthouse where he saw Brenton in a courtroom just after his arrest. The boy and his family captivated de Lestrade and he petitioned the judge to allow the proceedings to be filmed. After the question and answer period, members of the audience swarmed to the front of the theatre for autographs--mainly Patrick McGuiness's. If you can't recall the last time you uttered the words "hero" and "lawyer" in the same breath, watch the two public defenders-Mr. McGuiness and his female colleague-as they swim against the tide of Brenton Butler's presumed guilt. Mr. McGuiness's earthy, eloquent comments as the case proceeds are incomparable.
Rating:
Summary: EVERY JUROR IN A CAPITAL CASE SHOULD SEE THIS MOVIE
Review: I live in Illinois, a state that a couple of years back put a moratorium on capital punishment because too many people on death row were found to be not guilty thanks to DNA evidence or whose trials proved to have had very many serious flaws. You would not
believe - or, if this movie appeals to you, you probably would believe - how vitriolic the letters to the editor got in my very conservative hometown paper. The bottom line was virtually always " he was proven guilty in a court of law" blah blah blah. Nothing was said about actual guilt or innocence. Nothing was said about the very real fact that out of all the people involved in capturing, investigating, defending, prosecuting, and judging a person's crime there might be a mistake or two, a deliberate lie or two, a bad apple or two, someone with their own particular agenda
that could be detrimental to discovering the truth. No. A horrendous crime has taken place. Someone has to pay. If that someone happens to be guilty so much the better but it is not an absolute requirement. We all need closure. We all need revenge. There are so many things that jurors should be made aware of ahead of time before judging a case. From this documentary it would be 1) not all police are honest; 2) some police are ruthless; 3) not all signed confessions are the truth (forced extractions are just one of several reasons why); 4) not all murder investigations are thorough; 5) and eye-witness accounts and identifications are not always accurate. At the end of the trial when the lawyer for the prosecution was summing up, she said (and I paraphrase) "We have an eye-witness that says this young man did it. That is the only proof you need of his guilt." That woman was lying and she should have been called on the carpet right then and there for it. First of all the witness could have been lying (but I don't think he was, in this particular case) and second he could have been wrong. Time and time again eye witness testimony has been proven to be wrong even though the witness is not actively lying. I have to believe every officer of the law and every officer of the court knows this. Why was she allowed to say that and get by with it? In this case, it is a comfort to know that she didn't get by with it. Thank God for this particular Public Defender and his crew who not only believed their client was innocent, but were intelligent and savvy enough to find the flaws in the State's case. Thank God for the jury. Not all juries would have been so smart or unbiased. Thank God for director de Lestrade and his crew for being at the right place at the right time. We as a nation need to be made aware of the underbelly of law enforcement. Night after night on channel after tv channel we are told about all the criminals out there and their dastardly crimes. We are all becoming paranoid which could make us even more eager to put away every unsavory and unsavory-looking person out there. Thank God for the defendants' family who were whole (in so many
ways) and who stood by him every step of the way. We need to be careful, vigilant, and demanding of excellence in all things that we do, not the least of which is in seeing that justice is done. In the Old Testament of the Bible , the single most prevalent concept is Justice. We need to remember that punishment is not any part of Justice, if there is no Truth.
Rating:
Summary: YIKES!! This movie is a jaw-dropper
Review: I was a little put off when i first started watching this documentary by the seeming low-budget quality. It was filmed for HBO and looks like it was shot on video. The movie is basically a document of a court case and takes you slowly through the process: the evidence, the crime, the witness, the accused, etc. It doesn't stray too far away from the courtroom. However, what you witness - a young black man being tried for a crime he may not have committed (the murder of a white woman) unearths some institutional racism of the highest order. The astonishing thing is how clear the film makes it. The fact that all of this happened just a few years ago (and not in the 1950s somehwere in the deep south)is very, very troubling. I cannot, in fact, think of another movie about botched police work that is quite so frightening. If you watch this movie all the way through till the end, I promise you, the last five minutes will make your jaw drop to the floor. Very heartbreaking. An excellent, illuminating film.
Rating:
Summary: Make sure you have a box of tissue...
Review: My girlfriend watched this documentary that she caught early one morning on HBO and insisted I see this. Even after the synopsis she gave me, I had no idea the movie was as compelling as it is. Poor young Brenton Butler, so young, so quiet, so scared, so violated. The basis of this documentary is Brent's arrest 2 hours after a murder occured in a nearby hotel, the murder of an older lady leaving breakfast with her husband. An African-American male came up to them, demanded her pocketbook and then shot her in the bridge of the nose, killing her instantly. The murder occured right around 7:00am and members of Brent's family all testified to Brent being home from 7:00am to 9:00am. He was on his way to Blockbuster to get a job application and never made it there. His arrest and subsequent trial shows much incompetence, carelessness, disreagard and shoddy work by both the police and detectives investigating this case. Brent's lawyer, Patrick McGuiness, comes out ready to fight. McGuiness's fervent interrogation of the detectives and police involved in this investigation and cover-up unleashes lies and we also learn that Brent had been subject to physical abuse in order to get him to sign a confession against his will. Throughout the movie, Brent is just a little boy in a corner, not saying anything, no facial expressions, but a look of pure sadness - the boy wouldn't hurt a fly. I will not tell anymore of this documentary - you truly need to watch it for yourself. But the most heart-wrenching part of this is seeing his mother crying on the stand, testifying that Brent told her "I didn't do it," and watching a single tear fall down his face. I cried right along with him.
Rating:
Summary: Northern Liberal's Wet Dream
Review: Riveting and insightful, "Murder on a Sunday Morning", is a documentary that is an eye-opener for those unacquainted - or walking around wearing blinders - with the legal system in America. A young black man is "identified" as the perpetrator of the murder of a Florida tourist, arrested, and brought to trial. The camera takes us through the boy's prison tenure, the heartwrenching agony of his parents, the untiring efforts of his defense team (headed by the crafty Patrick McGuinness), and the eventual court proceedings. One cannot look at the eyes of the accused, Brenton Butler, and not be moved to tears. His expressions of disbelief at all that happens around him make for captivating viewing. His parents' undying support and inner strength, along with McGuinness's unending pursuit of justice, show that good will eventually win out. No Hollywood drama can capture the tension and pathos of this Academy Award-winning film.
Rating:
Summary: A Real-life "Law & Order"
Review: Riveting and insightful, "Murder on a Sunday Morning", is a documentary that is an eye-opener for those unacquainted - or walking around wearing blinders - with the legal system in America. A young black man is "identified" as the perpetrator of the murder of a Florida tourist, arrested, and brought to trial. The camera takes us through the boy's prison tenure, the heartwrenching agony of his parents, the untiring efforts of his defense team (headed by the crafty Patrick McGuinness), and the eventual court proceedings. One cannot look at the eyes of the accused, Brenton Butler, and not be moved to tears. His expressions of disbelief at all that happens around him make for captivating viewing. His parents' undying support and inner strength, along with McGuinness's unending pursuit of justice, show that good will eventually win out. No Hollywood drama can capture the tension and pathos of this Academy Award-winning film.
Rating:
Summary: An important film.
Review: The subtext which usually emerges when simplicity is avoided in the telling of a morality tale is that good and evil are actually arbitrary. The fresh and shocking impact of this film is that the contrast between good and evil is sharp and clear. So rarely do we see that contrast today that we feel revived from moral slumber, even if momentarily. That's the essence of great storytelling. Had this documentary told a tale which took place in 1965, I would have thought the film's straightfaced, understated delivery to be somewhat unengaging. However, the fact that the story takes place in 2000 and in our modern police system, it makes for a devstating revalation. The characters are archetypal, as emblemanic as the point being made. Racism, indolence and ineptitude rarely find a stage where they can be observed so pure. We also rarely get the opportunity to watch good people shake the system into behaving the way it should. This film should not be criticized for it's simplicity of point and of it's characters - if anything, we should be thankful that such characters exist and have endured this ordeal. It is a necessary and important distillation of where we still are as a nation - powerfully principled yet terribly flawed. The film is one-sided, as it should be (innocent until proven guilty), and it is deeply moving. To classify this film as a "liberal's wet dream" (as another reviewer has unfairly done) is to engage the cynicism which habitually complicates and frustrates communication of basic ideas; it smacks of neo-Hollywood. The undergraduate writer's urge to dilute good with poison and draw virtue from evil is not always evidence of genuine profundity. More often than not it's simply cloudy and ill-defined values.
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