Feds get second chance to prosecute Palisades fire arson suspect
Prosecutors get a second chance against Jonathan Rinderknecht after splitting the two fires into separate charges.
By Hans Laetz
The alleged Palisades fire arsonist goes back on trial for a second time Monday morning in federal court in Los Angeles. This is a do-over for prosecutors at the troubled U.S. Justice Department office in L.A., in their case against Jonathan Rinderknecht.
Prosecutors made a major legal blunder last year.
Rinderknecht is accused of both brush fires — the small Lachman fire on New Year's Eve and the gigantic Palisades fire that blossomed six days later. They gave jurors no way to convict Rinderknecht on one fire but not the other.
In the earlier federal case, jurors were given no legal option to convict Rinderknecht only of the first fire. It was all or nothing.
In June, ten of the jurors voted to acquit him because they did not believe Rinderknecht had set the second fire. They believed that may have been the responsibility of the L.A. City Fire Department or California State Parks.
Two jurors held out for guilty and forced a mistrial.
One of those jurors, named Serena, told ABC 7 last summer that the feds blew it by conflating the two cases: "I don't think there was enough evidence to say he started the first fire. Where he needed to be, he needs to be responsible for the whole Palisades — if there was enough proof, I'm gonna put somebody down for that entire thing. A lot happened there."
Now the feds get a second chance, and this time they have corrected their first error. They have split the two fires into two separate criminal charges.
The judge says she may not allow evidence that for fire number two the L.A. City Fire Department was negligent, so the jury won't hear that evidence.
The legal blunder came from an L.A. federal prosecutor's office led by a political appointee — an office that has been concentrating on items like illegal aliens and non-existent voter fraud.
Experienced veteran prosecutors have been deserting routine criminal cases at Justice Department offices all across the country as the office has become politicized.