"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. |
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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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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 want to 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.
Louis
Taylor
Ernest
Willis had the bad luck to survive a fatal fire. Cops
didn't
like
the way he acted afterward. They had no evidence
to
support their suspicions: no fingerprints, no bodily fluids, no
flammable
liquids in the house or on Willis' clothes or body, no witnesses, no
motive.
They charged him anyway, kept him drugged through his trial and
got
a conviction. Then the appeals courts abandoned him. Now he waits on death
row
while his final appeal before execution works its way through federal
court.
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. |
Insurance
Companies ~ Police ~ Prosecutors
An Unholy Alliance
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.
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?
Terry
Sorah
of St. Clair Shores, MI believed in American justice. He believed that
if
you are innocent and you tell the truth, you have nothing to fear.
Husband,
father, grandfather, Terry was a scout leader, church elder, Sunday
school
teacher, and a business owner. Then an accidental fire destroyed
Terry's
auto painting business, and Terry was Transformed into a Criminal.
Arson
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