I am sorry, I many not have been explaining myself properly. Remember we were talking about intent, what the person was thinking when he did the act of setting the fire. Here is where I went wrong.

Circumstantial evidence can be used to determine what act by a person was conducted. The investigator determines through the evidence ignition of the fire was the result of direct human interaction. Then it is determined through the evidence that the person was the only person present at the time of ignition. This is evidence as to the person igniting the fire. This is not intent. You still do not know what the persons was thinking as to the reason he ignited the fire. This is the intent that I am saying cannot be determined through this evidence. This evidence cannot scientifically prove what the person was thinking.

The other think I am trying to say is the circumstantial evidence can easily lead to the wrong conclusion as to the person’s involvement, such as was my example about the bar room fire. Here all the circumstantial evidence pointed to the owner, when in fact it was a third party that set the fire. In my state a person having a fire that was set in his house and him filing an insurance claim is sufficient to convict him of setting the fire or being responsible for the setting of the fire. This is what was done to my owner of the bar. Everyone but one, the DA, jumped on the bandwagon to have this person convicted and deny him of the insurance money he was owed. They all said, including me at the time, that evidence proved his intent was to collect the insurance money. I continuously go back and think about this case. Thanks to a smart DA he was not put in jeopardy of going to jail. He did lose his insurance money for a time. This proved to me that circumstantial evidence can get you into trouble. What if a person had died because of the fire and this man have been put to death, how would I have felt then? This is why I am so touchy about circumstantial evidence and a person’s intention.

Let me ask, what is wrong with the fire investigator presenting the facts and not suggesting the person’s intent. Can we not say that there was a human action responsible for the fire and leave it at that? If the psychiatrist and psychologist have a special area of their education addressing why a person set a fire can the fire investigator say our analysis of circumstantial evidence is equal to the training their profession requires to do the same thing? Why not stay to what we a good at and have the education for as to the origin and cause of a fire. Don’t get caught up in the statistical data process. I have not classified a fire since 1996. I have gone to court and presented my facts as I did before that date. The only thing I changed is that after that date I said the evidence shows that there was human involvement in the ignition of the fire, and I did not say what was the person’s intention. This has not changed the outcomes of the cases by me limiting what I was saying.

I believe intent is a psychological factor that fire investigators should stay away from unless he has specific training in that area.

Jim Mazerat
Forensic Investigations Group