Brutus "Brutal" Howell was played by David Morse in the 1999 film adaptation of The Green Mile .
Brutus Howell is a character in the novel The Green Mile. He is a guard at Cold Mountain Penitentiary on death row and the second in command there. He is loyal to Paul Edgecomb and hates Percy Wetmore even more so than Paul. Despite his nickname and his size, Brutus rarely hurts the inmates and is rather soft-hearted, although his temper is rather short.
However, Brutus cannot put up with disrespect and is furious when Percy mistreats the inmates. This is shown a few times throughout the movie, such as when Percy degrades Bitterbuck's body, when he says that the Green Mile is just "a bucket of piss to drown rats in" (thus referring to the inmates as "rats"), and when Percy botches Del's execution. After Percy does the latter, Brutal loses his temper and punches Percy, but Paul holds him back. He was one of the guards who attends John coffey's execution. In the book, he died 25 years later, 1960, of a sudden heart-attack while eating a fish sandwich and watching wrestling T.V.