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posted by martyb on Friday March 10 2017, @12:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the Liar!-Liar!-Pants-on-Fire! dept.

A defense lawyer's pants caught on fire while he was delivering a closing argument at an arson trial:

Stephen Gutierrez, who was arguing that his client's car spontaneously combusted and was not intentionally set on fire, had been fiddling in his pocket as he was about to address jurors when smoke began billowing out his right pocket, witnesses told the Miami Herald.

He rushed out of the Miami courtroom, leaving spectators stunned. After jurors were ushered out, Gutierrez returned unharmed, with a singed pocket, and insisted it wasn't a staged defense demonstration gone wrong, observers said. Instead, Gutierrez blamed a faulty battery in an e-cigarette, witnesses told the Miami Herald. "It was surreal," one observer told the Miami Herald.

Jurors convicted his client of second-degree arson anyway.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by MrGuy on Friday March 10 2017, @05:31PM (2 children)

    by MrGuy (1007) on Friday March 10 2017, @05:31PM (#477422)

    Gutierrez was representing Claudy Charles, 48, who is accused of intentionally setting his car on fire in South Miami-Dade.

    ...

    Stephen Gutierrez, who was arguing that his client’s car spontaneously combusted and was not intentionally set on fire....

    So, the case was specifically about a fire, and specifically about whether a fire was intentionally set or not. The defense apparently was advancing a theory of the case that the fire had happened spontaneously.

    It would be a heck of a coincidence that the only time this happened in a courtroom would be during closing arguments of a case that turns specifically on the question of whether fires can start without being deliberately set.

    Miami-Dade police and prosecutors are now investigating the episode. Officers seized several frayed e-cigarette batteries as evidence.

    Emphasis mine.

    It's the "several" that seems damning here. Is it possible that a damaged battery could start a fire in a device designed to generate heat? Sure it is - there have been several news stories about this potential danger. But a single person in possession of MULTIPLE damaged batteries? Who carries multiple batteries? Maybe a single spare, and in that case I'd hope it's a new one. Having several that "just happen" to be damaged in a way that can specifically start a fire seems more than a bit pat.

    He might not have specifically intended the start the fire in his pants (It would take a lot more than the stakes here for ME to start a fire in that particular area....). But it seems to strain credulity that he wasn't planning to start a fire SOMEWHERE during closing arguments.

    My purely speculative guess - he was planning to subtly put the previously disconnected damaged battery back in the vaporizer in his pocket to "arm" his incendiary device (so it wouldn't go off before he was ready), with the expectation he'd pull the vaporizer out of his pocket and place it on a pile of paper or his briefcase before launching into his argument, in the hope that the fire would start behind him, untouched by human hands. Unfortunately for him, his device worked too well, and it didn't wait for him to get it out of his pocket before it burst into flames.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 10 2017, @08:46PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday March 10 2017, @08:46PM (#477520) Journal

    I'm pretty sure if one battery gets damaged (catches on fire), everything else in your pocket will also get damaged. Especially batteries.

    (just throwing this lawyer a bone here)

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2017, @09:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2017, @09:29PM (#477542)

    Or more likely, just an eventuality. I'd imagine that many defense attorneys claim accident when their client is on trial for arson.