The first trial of a man charged with setting a fire that destroyed about 30 homes in Mendocino County recently ended in a mistrial, according to court documents.
Three years after Devin Lamar Johnson, 23, was charged with aggravated arson for allegedly setting a fire that burned about 50 structures and evacuated hundreds of residents from an area just north of Ukiah in September of 2021, his trial began last month in Marin County Superior Court.
According to court documents dated May 30, the fifth day of the trial, a mistrial was declared that day due to a hung jury, and a new trial was expected to be scheduled the following day. Also according to court documents, another trial has been scheduled to begin on July 24, 2024.
Justin Buckingham, a battalion chief with the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority who investigated the fire, said he was in the courtroom May 22 as jury selection began in Marin County, the jurisdiction where the trial had been moved to shortly after jury selection began in Mendocino County last year.
A trial at the courthouse in Ukiah had been delayed due to concerns surrounding Johnson’s mental status, but the defendant was declared “restored to competency” in July of 2022, and a trial was then scheduled for the following month.
After more delays, the trial was finally underway last year in Mendocino County Superior Court, but soon after jury selection began in January of 2023, Judge Keith Faulder approved a change of venue for Johnson’s trial.
Johnson was arrested two days after allegedly starting the Hopkins Fire on Sept. 19, 2021, after investigators from multiple agencies, including the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, Cal Fire and the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority, had obtained surveillance footage from a nearby business that showed an adult man starting the fire on Hopkins Street near the Moore Street Bridge in Calpella.
Photographer Peter Armstrong, who took a photograph showing what appears to be Johnson standing on a bridge watching the fire, said he was called upon to give testimony at the trial.
According to the MCSO, Johnson was on “active, felony probation for an attempted robbery charge” at the time of his arson arrest, and was booked into Mendocino County Jail on suspicion of “three separate charges of arson: aggravated arson (multiple structures), arson of an inhabited structure, and arson during a state of emergency.”
(Ukiah Daily Journal)
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