{"id":380655,"date":"2026-06-30T14:03:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T14:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/380655\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T14:03:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T14:03:20","slug":"they-dont-have-the-goods-residents-criticize-plans-to-retry-palisades-fire-arson-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/380655\/","title":{"rendered":"‘They don\u2019t have the goods’: Residents criticize plans to retry Palisades fire arson case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After a jury failed to reach a verdict<\/a> in the trial of a man accused of starting the Palisades fire, First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli quickly announced that his office would retry the case.<\/p>\n

Observers say the jury\u2019s 10-2 vote in favor of acquitting Jonathan Rinderknecht was a major blow to Essayli\u2019s office. Some went as far as to say a retrial would be a waste of time and prosecutors should walk away from the case altogether.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t have the goods,\u201d said Lisa Sweetingham, a longtime Palisades resident and journalist who attended the trial in federal court after losing her home in the fire. \u201cTen jurors saw that, and a lot of people in the audience saw that. They really don\u2019t have the evidence to bring it home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several defense witnesses poked holes in the prosecution\u2019s theory that Rinderknecht deliberately started the Lachman fire on Jan. 1, 2025, which reignited on Jan. 7 into the Palisades fire, killing 12 people and destroying thousands of homes.<\/p>\n

A Palisades resident said he saw several teens leaving the hill behind his house after the Lachman fire started, acting \u201cboastful.\u201d A Los Angeles firefighter testified that he saw flashes of light and heard loud noises that sounded like fireworks in the area around midnight. A defense expert testified that the most likely cause of the blaze was fireworks. <\/p>\n

On top of that, Sweetingham said, Rinderknecht called 911 more than a dozen times on Jan. 1. She felt it was a stretch to hold him accountable for the rekindling six days later, after a series of mistakes by fire commanders and others in failing to put out the earlier blaze, a sentiment echoed by a juror who spoke publicly after the trial.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d like to see the government put that much focus and money and human capital into examining the institutions and the infrastructure, and the various departments that failed us, from Jan. 1 through Jan. 7, rather than retry a 30-year-old Uber driver who may or may not have started this fire at all,\u201d Sweetingham said. <\/p>\n

In a civil lawsuit against the city and the state, Los Angeles firefighters testified about a series of communication failures and questionable decisions by higher-ups<\/a> that led crews to leave the area prematurely.<\/p>\n

Fire crews were ordered to roll up their hoses, despite complaints that a more thorough mop-up was needed<\/a>. One firefighter picking up hoses on Jan. 2 found crackling red-hot coals<\/a> in the dirt. A captain cautioned his chief that it was too soon to pick up the hoses. And crews did not walk the entire perimeter of the burn scar after a report of smoke in the area on Jan. 3. Fire commanders also failed to pre-deploy engines<\/a> in the area on Jan. 7 despite dire warnings of extreme winds.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson Stephanie Bishop said that internal and outside investigations into the Lachman fire response are ongoing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis department\u2019s commitment to accountability and operational improvement is unchanged,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

For many fire victims, the focus remains on the lawsuit, which gives them a shot at a payout to help rebuild their homes, said Alex Robertson, one of the attorneys handling the case. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe prosecution of this defendant did nothing to help them rebuild their homes,\u201d he said, adding that the state and the city have repeatedly pointed to the arson case in what he called an attempt to distract from their own liability. <\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, our position is we don\u2019t care what ignited the Lachman fire \u2014 our case is all about what happened starting on Jan. 2,\u201d Robertson said.<\/p>\n

Legal experts were not surprised by the plan to retry such a high-profile criminal case, saying that prosecutors now know how witnesses will testify, what the defense will argue and how some of the evidence landed with the jury. And they can fine-tune their case accordingly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they need to do a better job rebutting the fireworks theory,\u201d said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice. \u201cThey really need to establish that causal link between Jan. 1 and Jan. 7 in a much more persuasive way.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Rahmani said he thinks the overwhelming vote to acquit is \u201ca clear sign\u201d that the case should be dropped and Essayli should move on.<\/p>\n

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Loyola Law School, said that the second time around, prosecutors need better evidence \u2014 or to present it in a more convincing manner.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery aspect of this has to be closely examined, and done so from a position, frankly, of humility, realizing that it\u2019s not a slam dunk,\u201d she said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the first time, and it will not be the second time.\u201d<\/p>\n

She pointed to the juror\u2019s criticism of the prosecution\u2019s focus on Rinderknecht\u2019s ChatGPT history. The juror, who identified herself only as Syrena, told reporters that she uses the chatbot herself and was angered \u201cthat they were putting his character down for just being human.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the trial, prosecutors read aloud Rinderknecht\u2019s prompts to ChatGPT, telling jurors that he had asked the chatbot to create images for him of a fire and expressed negative feelings \u201cabout wealthy people and his anger about society.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re going to win this case just by attacking his character,\u201d Levenson said. \u201cHe does seem like a really troubled individual that could do a crime like this, but the jury wanted evidence that he did do the crime. And that comes back to things like physical evidence, eyewitness testimony, expert testimony.\u201d <\/p>\n

Essayli, meanwhile, criticized jurors, saying they considered things that were not part of the trial \u2014 like the Los Angeles Fire Department\u2019s culpability \u2014 in their deliberations. <\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of how competent or negligent L.A. Fire was in responding, it does not absolve his guilt in starting the initial fire,\u201d Essayli told KFI on Friday. \u201cWe will redo this trial, and hopefully get better jurors.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Robertson said that the omission of any testimony on the shortcomings in the fighting of the fire, after a ruling by the judge, was an elephant in the room that was clearly bothersome to jurors. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was so many people up there that said they did see smoldering, so why wasn\u2019t it taken care of?\u201d said Syrena, the juror.<\/p>\n

E. Randol Schoenberg, an attorney who lost his Malibu home in the fire and is representing victims in the civil case, said the main issue for him as a resident is the lack of accountability at LAFD and the state for failing to extinguish the earlier fire. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs for the civil case against the State, it makes no difference what caused the fire on January 1,\u201d he said. \u201cThe only thing that matters is that the State knew it was dangerous and failed to do anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a jury failed to reach a verdict in the trial of a man accused of starting the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[599,5781,1436,4744,3802,1073,7217,7211,37188,29663,48,52,51,7216,47,50,49,26079,7214,225,1428],"class_list":["post-380655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-area","tag-bill-essayli","tag-case","tag-evidence","tag-fire","tag-home","tag-jan","tag-jonathan-rinderknecht","tag-juror","tag-jury","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lachman-fire","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-prosecution","tag-prosecutor","tag-state","tag-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}