ARSON BIG TOPIC MY ONE CASE THE CLASSIC BEAV AMBUSH IMPROV

I once represented a degenerate old black man, who lived in a run down tenament, in Tampa, maybe Ybor City as I recall.

He had been charged with felony arson, for intentionally burning down his whole apartment building. I think maybe ten or fifteen families or individuals lived there. It was four stories high, as I recall.

Anyway, the case was considered impossible to defend. 

They even had, believe it or not, a long Fire Department or local News station, close up video, almost a minute long, which, for that time, seemed interminable, of several, not just one, quite justifiably outraged fellow tenants, of that very building, who were just losing, at that moment, their modest leasehold homes, and all their personal belongings, lambasting him viciously over the head with their handbags and fists and claws, and yelling expletives at him as they did, on camera, in front of the building as fire department people swarmed around with big hoses on the ground, back and forth, to try to save the building and secure the safety of those who had lived there, and even trying to pull these women off him, too. 

These were not Charlie's Angels...They could go to jail themselves, for battery ,for what they were doing on camera to my poor client, and it would have been an easy case to prove, whereas no one saw how the fire started!

This video was shown to the jury in the case...

It would be hard to imagine a more damaging piece of film evidence than this.

 I had no successful valid basis to try to exclude it...although I desperately tried something I am sure.

That is what you call highly inflammatory and inculpatory but nevertheless circumstantial evidence.

You may think that is all, and well would one hope so, but there is a whole lot more.

There was a key state witness, who lived in a bungalow across the street from this apartment building.

She made an outlandish and  hardly credible statement, to the police about my client's behavior and statements, but nevertheless one, to an experienced trial lawyer, probably had some indicia of reliability......

She took the witness stand in the case. She claimed to be sitting on her front porch at the time this fire started. She stated that she saw my client come down the outside staircase, half way, then stop there, and say: 

"I know what I'll do. I'll go back up here (back up to his apartment), and set this motherfucker on fire, and they'll come runnin out like roaches!"

That is what the woman, on the porch across the street, claimed and testified in open court that she heard my client say. 

He then went back upstairs, and shortly after that, there was evidence of a fire in the building.

So, here we have what appears to be the most damning possible case for the prosecution. 

No case, in Rumpole, that I am aware of, even begins to come close to that bad.

What happened?

My client seemed to have some sort of answer for everything, one way or another. I used this material only on cross. 

Because it did not come out until my cross examination itself unfolded, this defense case was a classic example of what I became known for: ambush!

He claimed that the women beating him, up in front of the burning building, were angry with him because he had absconded with an apartment building common beer money kitty! Not because he had torched their homes! 

The woman across the street, he claimed, was a disgruntled jilted old flame of his, who now despereately wanted to get back at him.

The state called a very respectable black woman politician, and lawyer, who testified to who owned the building itself, and how they did not agree to have it burned down.... It was merely a technical requirement of their case, to put on evidence of ownership of the property damaged or destroyed...

We turned that testimony on cross into a charade that the building was in poor condition, the owners wanted the homeowners' insurance policy limits for the lost burned building, an argument which was actually often quite credible  in other circumstances, given how these buildings suddenly seemed to burn down when there were code violations and fire insurance, creating a motive for the fire in some other smart deep pocket entity than my client.

As with most of my trials, we put on no case whatsoever, called no witnesses, had no physical evidence to present. My client was not callable as a witness in his own defense for the usual reasons. It was open, cross, and close.

So, the conclusion was that my client was found not guilty by the jury, and not only found not guilty, but found not guilty in less than half an hour of deliberation, as if the state had somehow put on a poor weak case, in the first place, which should never have been brought in front of a jury ever! 

I used to gloat especially loudly when a not guilty verdict was especially quick!