"When there's a
fatal
fire and someone survives, the survivor will be charged with arson and
murder."
~ Gerald Hurst, Ph.D.
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Arson or
Accident?
The inability of arson investigators to recognize the
difference
could put YOU in prison - or worse. |
How many could be
wrongfully convicted of arson?
There are 500,000 structure fires overall a year; 75,000 of them are
labeled suspicious. John Lentini, who has campaigned widely to improve
investigators' knowledge, says most experts he talks with believe the
accuracy of fire investigators is at best 80% — meaning as many as
15,000 mistaken investigations each year, and who knows how many
convictions.
If
your house caught fire, could you prove you didn't commit arson?
WTHR-TV's 13 Investigates looks into the case of an Indiana man whose
arson conviction was reversed by an appeals court. The case raises
questions about how arson investigations are run.
Burning
Injustice Part One - In a small river town known to take a gamble,
there is a smoldering burn of injustice. A midnight fire in April 2000
sent flames belching from Robin Montgomery's house and claimed
everything he owned - including his freedom.
Burning
Injustice Part Two - They are supposed to be Indiana's elite in
fire investigation. But a nationally reknown scientist says state arson
teams here and across the country are using outdated, unproven
techniques. Some experts say it's putting innocent suspects behind bars
and even to death.
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It took a Fayette County, PA jury just 25 minutes to
figure out Bret Shallenberger was innocent of hiring a former employee
to burn down Shallenberger's profitable business. It's the local
prosecutor, who promised the actual arsonist immunity in exchange for
framing Shallenberger, who should be on trial.
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A Waco, TX attorney has launched an innocence
project at Baylor
University, choosing one of the most gripping cases in McLennan County
history as the group’s first assignment. Since
February, Walter M. Reaves Jr. and three Baylor Law School
students have been poring over evidence from the 1988 trial of Ed Graf.
The Hewitt resident was convicted of killing his two stepsons by
burning them alive in a storage shed behind their home. He is serving a
life sentence in a Gatesville prison. Graf's conviction was based
entirely on circumstantial evidence. Deciding
someone’s guilt on such measures is not prudent, Reaves
said. Once someone is painted as a criminal, almost any action they
take can be construed to fit that theory, he said, even though there
may be innocent explanations for it. |
The fire swept quickly through the red brick
rowhouse. It
consumed the sofa and love seat and caught the curtains, burning so
brightly that an orange glow filled narrow Carver Street in Northeast
Philadelphia's Summerdale section. Daniel Dougherty, a
26-year-old mechanic with a drinking problem, ran
out of the fiery home, cried for help, and grabbed a garden hose to try
to douse the flames. But it was no use. The fire was relentless, and
its choking smoke soon reached his two sons, Danny Jr., 4, and John, 3,
upstairs in their beds. Nearly 22 years later, from a cell on
Pennsylvania's death row,
Dougherty is fighting to prove he did not set the blaze that took the
boys' lives -- and is counting on an evolving science to save his own.
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(Includes Report and Supporting
Documentation)
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After a house burned down
on Bay-Arenac County Line
Road near Bay City, MI, Pinconning-Fraser Fire officials called
Michigan State Police
fire investigator Jeffrey Wallace to the scene. They suspected arson,
they told him. And when Wallace showed up with his arson dog named Cops
and produced
evidence that accelerants fueled the blaze, they had all the evidence
needed to bring charges - against Wallace.
That's because local firefighters intentionally ignited the abandoned
structure - without using any accelerant - in a ''sting'' on Wallace
executed in conjunction with Michigan State Police and other agencies.
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Link:
Bruce
Mason
Imprisoned for an Electrical Fire
On a warm August night in
2004, Michael Espalin and his dog
watched Riverside, CA firefighters douse seven burning palm trees on a
residential street. It was 1 a.m., an unusual time to be walking a dog,
or so thought an arson investigator. After answering a number of questions,
Espalin, then 31, was asked to rub his face and hands on a gauze pad
and sent on his way.
Half a year later, Espalin was charged as a serial arsonist,
accused of lighting 21 fires, mostly trees and bushes, in
Riverside. No
eyewitnesses or traditional evidence linked Espalin to the
crimes. But the Riverside County district attorney's office built a
case against him based on a bloodhound allegedly picking up his scent
on a charred incendiary device and cold crime scenes and matching it to
the pad. After Espalin
spent two years in jail awaiting trial, a jury
deadlocked 9 to 3 in January for acquittal. Most jurors did not believe
that the bloodhound, Dakota, found Espalin's scent at the scene of the
fires days and weeks after they were set. Prosecutors say they intend to try Espalin
a second time.
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The
clues were everywhere. A young woman lay
dead in a burned cabin at a church camp near East Stroudsburg, PA,
while her father survived.
Most of the lessons taught to budding fire investigators stood out at
the scene. The local experts — the county fire marshal, a state-hired
fire analyst, a chemist — spoke without hesitation that it all proved
arson — and murder.
No one questioned their conclusion. It was a textbook case, and the
father, Han Tak Lee, was dealt a guilty verdict and a life
sentence.
Except the textbooks were wrong. Within a few years of Lee's
conviction, scientific studies smashed decades of earlier, widely
accepted beliefs about how fires work and the telltale trail they leave
behind.
Also see John Lentini's report regarding Mr. Lee's case, "A Calculated
Arson," in pdf format.
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In April 2002, a Rapides Parish, Louisiana grand
jury
indicted Amanda Hypes on
charges of arson and murder in relation to a house fire that took the
lives of her three children. The charges were based on a
California fire expert's
findings—an analysis conducted more than a year after the blaze was
extinguished and the house was razed. Prosecutors said they would
demand the death penalty. Hypes remained in jail
for more than four years awaiting trial
until June, 2006, when a judge dismissed the indictment and ordered her
released. He ruled that the initial arson finding by Louisiana
authorities was based "merely on an old wives' tale" and that "every
shred of evidence to prove or disprove a possible crime was destroyed
and placed in a pile." |
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An
arson expert hired by Lisa Greene's defense team says the Midland, NC
mother did not set the Jan. 10, 2006 house fire that killed her two
children. In
interviews with the Charlotte Observer, John Lentini, a
private fire
investigator in Marietta, Ga., said a lit candle in the children's
bedroom started the fire. Lentini
-- a national advocate of using research-based
scientific
methods to investigate fires -- said local and state investigators are
relying on outdated techniques to determine where the fire started and
how it spread. |
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Sandra
Kemper, a suspect in an alleged arson that took the life of her son,
denied nine times that she had anything to do with the fire. Then the
St. Louis County police detective resorted to one of the oldest tricks
in the book -- he told Kemper that she had failed a lie detector test.
Later that day, Kemper admitted that she set the fire to get out from
under the burden of being the sole provider to her family and to
collect insurance proceeds. But the confession did not fit the facts of
the crime, the motive evidence was weak, and Sandra had passed the lie
detector test with flying colors. The trial judge declared a
mistrial on issues related to the polygraph, and Missouri's high court
has now ruled that Sandra cannot be retried. |
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Link
The Cost of "Closure"
On November 29, 1988,
six Kansas City, Missouri firefighters were killed
in an explosion while fighting a series of set fires at a construction
site.
As late as 1995, ATF agents said the fire was set by organized labor,
to teach
the general contractor a lesson for using non-union labor. But
the
$50,000 reward motivated jailhouse snitches to finger 5 indigent Native
Americans
convicted in 1997 of arson and murder -- Frank Sheppard, Skip Sheppard,
Darlene
Edwards, Bryan Sheppard and Richard Brown.
Unlike many arson cases featured here, this is not about junk science
and
incompetent fire investigators. It's good, old fashioned
expedient
corruption. Click the link to learn more.
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Getting
out of prison didn't free Jennifer Hall.
Friends call and ask her to go out, but she mostly stays home. She
takes
college courses — online so she does not have to leave the house.
Hall, who lives in Shawnee, KS with her parents, was convicted in 2001
of
starting a fire at Cass Medical Center in Harrisonville, where she
worked
as a respiratory therapist.
But last year a judge threw out the verdict and wrote a ruling highly
critical
of Hall's first attorney. At a second trial, in February, a jury took
three
hours to decide the fire was caused by an electrical short in an old
clock
cord.
By then Hall, now 24, had been paroled after serving one day short of
12
months. |
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Until
May 19, 2005, Jack Chase was serving a sentence of 14 to 42 years for
arson of his residence in Hampton, New York in 1993. His state
habeas
was granted by Judge John Hall, and Jack is back with his family.
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Dale Chu's
conviction is proof that, in Wisconsin, you can convict someone
of arson even when the cause of a fire cannot be determined. All
it takes is a win-at-all-costs prosecutor like Vince Biskupic, perjured
testimony
from state "arson experts", the lies of a paid-off snitch and a
dummied-down
jury.
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Ken Richey
Colombus Grove, Ohio
Complete transcript of Frontline Scotland'sKilling
Time profile
of Kenny
Richey's case!
UPDATES
Conviction
Reversed
Ken
Richey's Death Penalty and Conviction Tossed
The
American
Dream that Died in a Death Row Cell
Reversal
Reversed
U.S. Supreme Court flips reversal, sends
Richey's
case back to 6th Circuit
Click HERE
for Decision (pdf)
August 11, 2007
Court Orders New Trial for Kenny Richey
For
the second time, a federal appeals court has ordered a new trial for an
Ohio man convicted of setting a fire that caused the death of a
two-year-old girl that he was babysitting. Investigators said Kenneth
Richey set the fire to kill his ex-girlfriend who was in the apartment
downstairs. The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 that
Richey's case was hampered by ineffective counsel because his attorney
did not challenge questionable arson evidence presented during his 1986
trial. The court ordered the state of Ohio to retry Richey within
90
days or set him free. That is exactly the same ruling the same court
made in 2005, but that ruling was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Ernest Willis
More than 17 years after
Ernest Willis went to death row for setting a house fire that consumed
two sleeping
women, West Texas prosecutors cited new suspects Monday. Faulty wiring perhaps. Maybe a defective ceiling
fan. Finding little to no
evidence of arson, the Fort Stockton district attorney
said he would file a motion today that is expected to make Willis the
first
inmate to walk free from Texas' death row in seven years.
Read more about Ernest's
case
and the other six who walked free from Texas' death row:
Death Isn't Fair
Madison Hobley
One of four Death Row inmates pardoned by Gov. George Ryan before he
left
office in January, Madison Hobley has filed a federal lawsuit accusing
Chicago
police of torturing and framing him for setting a 1987 fire that killed
seven
people, including his wife and infant son.
They were average people,
leading average lives. They had never been in trouble
with the law. Accidental fires took the lives of their loved ones. Then
they
were charged with arson and murder.
from
the Chicago Tribune
Todd
Willingham - Executed for an Accidental Fire
Strapped to a gurney in Texas' death chamber in February,
2004, just moments from his execution for setting a fire that killed
his three daughters, Cameron
Todd Willingham declared his innocence one last time. "
I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit,"
Willingham
said angrily. "I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did
not
do." Four fire cause and origin experts -- Gerald Hurst, John
Lentini,
John DeHaan and Kendall Ryland -- agree. "There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson
investigator that this
was an arson fire," said Hurst, a Cambridge University-educated chemist
who
has investigated scores of fires in his career. "It was just a fire."
* * *
Arson
Myths Fuel Errors
* * *
Boy, 7,
Tricked
into Confessing to Arson
PA State Police have
a unique track record for charging accidental fires
as arson. They have taken this to a new low, using pizza and
candy
to get a 7-year-old boy to confess to setting a fatal fire at a
neighbor's
home that occurred when the child was miles away. The child is
too young
to be prosecuted, even as a juvenile. Instead, the authorities
have put him in a treatment facility for mentally disturbed kids -- go
in normal,
come out twisted.
'Inflammatory'
Closing
The
"sheer heft of the truly damaging and irrelevant conduct" of Asst.
U.S. Attorney James D. Clancy led to Darrick Moore's conviction for
arson
in federal court in Pennsylvania.
Now the 3rd Circuit has ruled that Clancy's closing speech was not only
unfairly
prejudicial, but that it capped a trial studded from beginning to end
with
unfairly prejudicial evidence relating to alleged prior bad acts by
Moore.
Charles R. Garten,
III
When Henrico Co., VA
authorities charged Charles with torching the Poplar
Springs Baptist Church in Varina, the media was told,
"Some individuals reported that he made some statements about the
church
or religion in general." But Charles' alibi was ironclad, and his
accuser
had previously been convicted of filing false police reports.
Weldon Wayne Carr will not be retried for murder
and arson in the death of his wife. His conviction
was originally overturned in 1997, when the Georgia Supreme Court cited
the
unreliability of evidence that a trained dog found a fire accelerant at
the
scene. The Court also rebuked
then-prosecutor Nancy Grace -- now host of Court TV's "Closing
Arguments"
-- of engaging in "inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal conduct in
the
course of the trial." Retrial Denied
Few of
the innocent people charged with arson are as fortunate as Sonia,
Terri, Sheila,
Charles and Paul, who have been exonerated. (Dennis will get a new
trial;
his exoneration is no "sure thing.") They remain in prison~even Death
Row~for
fires that were either accidental in origin or which they clearly could
not
have set.
JOHN MALONEY
A 19-year veteran of the Green Bay, WI Police Department, John was
convicted in 1999 of murder, arson and mutilating a corpse in the death
of his estranged wife, Sandra. Since then, some of the top
forensic experts in the US have reviewed his case and concluded no
crimes occurred in the first place. Moreover, the lead prosecutor
has been turned out of office and is under FBI investigation, and
John's trial attorney is on the ropes for structuring his defense to
match the script of a movie he was negotiating.
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Incredible!
You
won't believe the unadulterated garbage prosecutors put on as expert
testimony
in arson cases. Unfortunately, judges and juries believe it.
The Prosecutions's Expert
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Insurance
Companies ~ Police ~ Prosecutors
An Unholy Alliance
Local
investigators, state fire marshals and agents from the U.S. Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives all conduct arson probes.
In
some cases, investigations are a joint effort.
There is also an increasing trend in which law enforcement relies on
evidence
collected by investigators hired by insurance companies.
Some states, including Pennsylvania, have laws that require insurance
investigators
to share findings with police. Pennsylvania goes a step further and
accepts
payment from the insurance industry to fund arson investigations.
Clear Conflict of Interest
When
fire damaged Oswald and Violet Carroll's Norwalk, Conn. home, Allstate
Insurance
denied Oswald's claim for $26,468 personal property claim. And when
Oswald
sued to force Allstate to pay his claim, the insurer brought a
counterclaim
accusing Oswald of arson. But a federal court jury didn't buy the arson
claim
and slapped the "good hands" with a
$500,000 Verdict
Two
days after a fire broke out at Woodgrains Furniture in Albert Lea, MN,
an insurance
investigator removed an extension cord from the scene. The female
end
of the cord was suspected to have caused the fire, but it disappeared.
Then
owner Bryan Purdie was charged with arson and -- guess what --
insurance
fraud. But it was the insurance company that perpetrated the
fraud,
and after an exhaustive 26-month battle, the
Arson Case has been Dismissed
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Tim
Zeak
of Public Adjustors USA, Inc. says, "Because the [fire investigation]
industry
is wrong so many times and has failed to adequately police itself, more
and more people have been raising the argument that fire investigation
is nothing
but a 'junk science' or some kind of voodoo." Tim exposes the claims
presented
as "scientific evidence" that are actually
Arson Myths .
See
how
fire investigators who should know better perpetuate arson myths in
real life
cases. That's how they charged Paul Camiolo with capital murder
and
arson for a tragic accidental fire. Compare them with the defense
experts'
reports. Download and read
Camiolo Case Experts' Reports and Depositions .
What's
the difference between state arson investigators or fire marshals and
insurance
company investigators? What kind of training does each have, and how do
their
roles overlap? Dr. Gerald Hurst answers
FAQs about Fire Investigators .
You're
honest, law abiding, a straight-arrow citizen. Wrongful convictions
happen
to other people. Pat Frost thought so. Now she asks
It Can't Happen to You ~ Or Can It?
Arson
Alliance Victim Support - Forum, Chat Room and timely
Alerts
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