Brenton Butler: The Case Of Jacksonville Florida

Brenton butler, a 15 year old young man that lived in Jacksonville Florida was arrested for committing murder in 2000. A man, Mr. James Stevens and his wife were robbed at gunpoint in front of a Ramada Inn in Jacksonville Florida. During the course of the robbery, the wife was shot and killed in front of her husband. He was able to give a description of the assailant and so he did. The assailant committing this crime has been characterized as a six feet tall skinny black male of age in between 20 and 25 years of age (Mr. Stevens 2000). Although Brenton Butler is much younger than the description given, and Butler is much shorter than the description as well, at least half a decade younger, he was still positively identified as to being the

I believe that even though Mr. Stevens had positively identified Butler as being the suspect, he should have still been given a picture line up or some other sort of process to either identify Butler or rule him out. Mr. Stevens admitted that butler was wearing different cloths than the first suspect, but was told by the officers that Butler went home and changed. The problem with this is the time frame that Butler had supposedly had to commit the crime, go home, see his family, do what he did at home, shower, change his clothes then go back to the same area where the crime was committed.

The murder was committed as a robbery in the first place and Mrs. Stevens purse was taken in the process of the robbery. This means that the suspect had touched the purse and under Locard’s exchange principal, there should be something at the crime scene and on the purse and also something on the perpetrator. The police or investigators did not process any evidence that they found. The purse was found by a can collector and called into the police. The purse contained about $1200 in cash and all of Mrs. Stevens property that was originally in her purse. The whole problem I find with the location where the purse was discovered is that it does not coincide with anything the police were trying to tie together for a timeline of the crime. There was no way that Butler, on foot, could have done what they said he did in their