Brenton Butler Murder Case Essay

On May 7th 2000, fifteen year old Brenton Butler was accused of the murder of Mary Ann Stephens, who had been fatally shot in the head while walking down a breezeway of a hotel with her husband. Two and a half hours later, Butler is seen walking a mile away from where the incident occurred, and is picked up by the police because he fit the description of the individual who shot Mary Ann Stephens. However, the only characteristic of the description that Butler featured was the color of his skin. Police then brought Butler to the scene of the crime in order for Mary Ann Stephens’s husband, James Stephens, to confirm whether or not Butler was the individual who had shot his wife. Almost immediately, Stephens identifies Butler as his wife’s killer.

However, police should have acknowledged that individuals can make mistakenly identify the wrong person, especially an individual who had just tragically witnessed his wife’s death, and that the positive identification can not be the only evidence used to confirm the identity of a suspect. In addition, a search was never conducted on Butler’s home to see if any evidence was there. Unless my memory fails me, police officers also did not perform a gun residue test on Butler to see if he had recently fired a gun. Regardless, police did not find any physical evidence, such as blood, on Butler’s clothes or body. In fact, there was no forensic investigation of evidence conducted at all. Mary Ann Stephen’s purse was later discovered in a trash can, but it wasn’t until after the acquittal of Brenton Butler that a fingerprint belonging to the real killer was found on her purse. Overall, the ethical issues involved in the Brenton Butler case are astounding. The best solution to resolve those issues is to thoroughly perform job duties with integrity. Investigators had to know that more evidence than just a positive identification made by one, rightly upset individual was not substantial enough to confirm the identity of the