Murder on a Sunday Morning (2001)
France 2, HBO, Pathé

Description

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.

Tags

2000s, Florida, Oscar winner, Murder

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Amazon user reviews

French director Jean-Xavier De Lestrade's intimate camerawork pulls viewers into the jury box to help decide the fate of 15-year-old Brenton Butler, a black resident of Jacksonville, Florida, who becomes the prime suspect in the shooting death of an elderly white woman simply because he was seen in the vicinity of the crime.
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10 San Francisco Chronicle | Carla Meyer

De Lestrade masterfully builds suspense, taking his time to reveal the players and the particulars and dropping little bombs that foment the viewer's outrage.
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10 Entertainment Weekly | Sumeet Bal

Attention, Law & Order fans: The verdict on Jean-Xavier de Lestrade's Oscar-winning doc is that it surpasses any TV drama. [...] A must-see expose on the hidden prejudices and failures of our justice system.
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10 dvdmoviecentral.com | Michael Jacobson

Director Jean-Xavier De Lestrade allows the drama to unfold without injecting it with an overkill of style. He correctly identified that the story itself was the attraction, and not the technique. Murder on a Sunday Morning is a tremendous documentary achievement in the best sense of the word.
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9.2 digitallyobsessed.com | Joel Cunningham

Murder on a Sunday Morning is a powerful, provocative, and infuriating documentary that is as much a polemic against the justice system as it is a profile of the public defenders who care enough about their jobs to see justice done.
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9.0 New York Times | Ron Wertheimer

If you give this film a chance, you'll stick around for the climax, which packs a one-two punch worthy of the most compelling detective story. But unlike pulp fiction, this tale will leave you with a great deal to think about.
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8.0 allmovie | Tom Wiener

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.
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7.0 filmcritic.com | Christopher Null

For anyone interested in a real look into the American criminal justice system -- away from the trappings of Hollywood -- this Oscar-winning documentary is an excellent study of a murder trial from start to finish.
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7.0 DVD Talk | John Wallis

It is an excellent story, but in terms of documentaries, it just didn't strike me as one of the greats or among the best I have seen. Unlike superior docs along similar subject lines like Paradise Lost and Brothers Keeper, we never really get to know the accused.
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