When an accidental fire is mistakenly called arson, there is often only one potential suspect, or person of interest, if you will. That is usually the surviving mom or dad or husband or wife.

Those persons are entitled to a presumption of innocence, but in reality, they are presumed guilty if the fire was in fact intentionally set. That is why I believe we need to take a step back, and start with the proposition that the fire was accidental, as most fires are. If there is sufficient evidence for the fire to overcome this presumption, then let the prosecution begin.

I have personally investigated hundreds of arson fires. It was how I made my living through most of the 1980s and early 1990s. Arson is generally not very subtle. If you process the scene thoroughly, arson bites you on the butt.

There were a few cases in which there was no evidence left of how the fire started, but I was able to show that the homeowner or removed their valuables, then lied about it, or did something to indicate that they knew the fire was going to happen. I ran across very few cases, however, were the evidence of arson was contestable.

Our profession has a long history of wrongful prosecutions (or wrongful accusations of arson in the civil arena), most of which could have been avoided if the original investigators carried a presumption of accidental cause into the fire scene. In almost all of these cases, somebody saw "pour patterns" where none existed, or evidence of "multiple points of origin" where everything had burned together.

Just as a reminder, here is a list of citizens whose lives were permanently changed or even destroyed by fire investigators who claimed to have "no presumption."

Ray Girdler, Arizona
Gerald Lewis, Florida
Terri Strickland, North Carolina
Ernest Willis, Texas
Paul Camiolo, Pennsylvania
Barbara Bylenga, California
John Metcalf, Georgia
Kenneth and Ricky Daniels, Indiana
Weldon Wayne Carr, Georgia
Louis DiNicola, Pennsylvania
Jean and Stephen Hanley, Florida
Jermaine Smith, North Carolina
Pedro Oliva, California
Ray Price, Ohio
Eve and Manson Johnson, Florida
Thomas Lance, Tennessee
Barbara Scott, Tennessee
Paul and Karen Stanley, Ohio
Michael Weber, Indiana
Beverly Jean Long, Georgia
Rebecca and Stephen Haun, Tennessee
Maynard Clark, Florida
Arturo Mesta, California

These are just some of the cases that I know about that eventually resulted in acquittals, dismissals, or a finding by a jury that the homeowners really did not torch their home or business. I'm sure that many of my colleagues have similar lists.

Each one of these names represents a tragedy. I believe that when good fire investigators die, they go to heaven and get to watch videotapes of how the fires they investigated really happened. I believe that went bad fire investigators die they going to hell and also get to watch videotapes of how the fires they investigated really happened.

The consequences of our work are exceedingly serious. The consequences of an error in our work are often tragic. There is no way to know what the error rate in fire investigation is, but I have addressed a lot of audiences of investigators who think that error rate is somewhere around 20% on a good day. When there are two fire investigators in a courtroom telling jurors different stories about the origin and cause of a fire, the error rate there is at least 50%.

When I was first being trained as a forensic scientist at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Laboratory, it was drummed into my head that it is better to let 10 guilty people go than to convict one innocent person. I took that training to heart, and I still believe it. If we approach every fire with a presumption that it is accidental, we are unlikely to miss very many arsons if we do our jobs right. If we err on the side of caution, we are unlikely to ruin any innocent lives.

John Lentini, CFI, D-ABC
Fire Investigation Consultant
Florida Keys
[www.firescientist.com]