Novel by Jacksonville author, daughter of a detective, is inspired by Brenton Butler case

Julie Delegal's novel, "Seen," is set in a fictional city much like Jacksonville, though somewhat smaller, which she calls Beau Rêve. If she were to locate it on a map, it would be right around where Palatka is in reality.

The story that inspired "Seen" is, however, quite real: the case of Brenton Butler, a Jacksonville teen who in 2000 was arrested in the murder of a Georgia tourist, though he soon claimed his confession was coerced with force by police. After he spent months in prison, a jury deliberated less than an hour before acquitting him.

A French film crew made a documentary on the case, "Murder on a Sunday Morning," which went on to win the Oscar for best documentary in 2001. With such exposure and intense local media coverage, the arrest drew much unflattering attention to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.

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The fallout included an apology to Butler and his family from the sheriff and state attorney, as well as a grand jury probe that criticized the police investigation and prosecutors for not thoroughly reviewing the evidence before indicting the teenager.

"Seen" — which recently won the Independent Publisher Book Award gold medal for best fiction novel in the Southeast region — is about a Black teen named Jason Royals.

Like Butler, he is 15 when he's picked up by police after a woman from Georgia is shot at a nearby hotel. The woman's traumatized husband identifies him as the killer and, after hours in police custody without a lawyer or notification of his parents, a confused and scared Jason eventually confesses.

The book shows the effect that months of confinement on Jason and his family, and it shows the mindset of one of the detectives, who is also Black, as the case moves toward a judge and a jury.

'A conversation'

Some police officers in "Seen" come off as flawed, fallible, even negligent. But Delegal said she didn't want her novel to focus simply on that.

"I just wanted to explore how it is that everything could go so utterly wrong," she said. “My main goal is to get some conversations started. My book is not the end of the conversation, but the beginning, I hope: conversations about the criminal justice system, conversations about race-based mistaken identity, conversations about structural racism, conversations about family, community, faith, healing.”

Delegal, who's 57, comes from a police family and says the first letters she learned were J, P and D, for the old Jacksonville Police Department.

She knows, she says, how tough the job can be. Her late father was Jim Geisenburg, a cop who spent more than a decade as a homicide detective in Jacksonville, a witness to much evil and violence.

“It changed him. Absolutely. The job was not easy. The job took its toll on him," she said.

She said she wrote the book to honor him, in a way, and there's a character — an older police officer who treats Jason with compassion — who is close to what her father was like.

Delegal, who's written for several publications including Folio Weekly and Jacksonville Magazine, said she was haunted by Butler's story. As a mother, she couldn't help but think of how much he'd suffered and lost. She was also struck by its long-lasting significance.

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In a 2010 story, 10 years after the crime, Times-Union courts reporter Paul Pinkham summed up the case's importance: "By the time the trial was over, Butler's public defenders had turned the system on its head and helped change police procedure in Jacksonville forever. His rapid acquittal spawned a grand jury probe, an Oscar-winning documentary and the conviction of two other men.

"Ten years later, the Butler trial's legacy remains palpable. Defense lawyers say police are more careful with eyewitnesses than they used to be. And police started filming felony suspect interviews and confessions after Butler's acquittal. Those tapes are now routine and relied on during trial."

A decade to see it through

"Seen" is self-published, with a cover by Jacksonville artist Hope McMath, former executive director of the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, and founder of the Yellow House gallery in Riverside.

Delegal said she published it herself after rejections from small publishers who said they liked the story and her writing, but told her they wanted "authentic voices."

"In other words, 'You’re a white woman and we don’t want to publish this,'” she said.

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She understands that, saying she had an "obligation" to try to do justice to the story, and its characters.

"My first thought was, you know, maybe the world is turning a corner. It’s about time," she said. "I asked myself over and over again, do I have the right to write this book? I just felt compelled to get it finished. These people, these imaginary people, took on lives of their own, and I needed to do them right by finishing their story.”

She had eight test readers, four of them Black, read the book before publishing, to offer opinions and advice. An attorney reviewed its long, gripping courtroom scenes, and Delegal has a background in law as well, from working as a paralegal at her husband Tad's law office.

It took her more than a decade, between working and raising children, to make the story be what it needed to be, and to bring the book to publication.

"I knew where I wanted it to go," she said, "but my imaginary people were more complex than I imagined them to be.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville book 'Seen' is inspired by Brenton Butler wrongful arrest