Burning Debra

In the early morning chill of January 27th Debra Bower was rescued from her burning motor-home by a man on his way to work in Ukiah. Ms. Bower was a homeless person, living in an old bread truck converted into a home of sorts with a bed in the back, and she was parked in front of the Fircrest Apartments on South State Street where she had somehow incurred the aesthetic wrath of a known tweeker who decided to burn her out. It has taken nearly 10 months but a visiting judge ruled last week that the cause of the fire was arson, and the man who committed it was very likely one William L. McPherson.

Mr. McPherson’s lawyer from the Office of the Public Defender, Heidi Larson, said her client had complained about the converted bread truck for several weeks and had been told — by some as-yet-unnamed municipal authority — that the only way the city (or county, since the city limit is a half-mile or so north of the scene of the crime) would essay to remove the vehicle was if it had been severely burned. So McPherson went out on a tweeker’s vigilante witch-hunt, and in the early tweeker-hours on the 27th lighted a highway emergency flare and tossed it inside between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, while Ms. Bower slept in the back.

It was still dark when the Good Samaritan came along and helped the desperate, panic-stricken woman out of her burning “home.” The converted bread van was old, dilapidated, and the window on the passenger side was broken out. But it was all Ms. Bower had and her rescuer helped her put the fire out. At the time, there was no way of knowing that McPherson was the one who had thrown the burning flare through the broken window.

“Yes,” Bower told the court, “I knew Will McPherson — or thought I did.”

Until Deputy Orell Massey, on July 30th picked up his mail from the crime lab and saw that the prints on the flare belonged to McPherson, then showed the results to Ms. Bower — until then, she probably counted Will, as she called him, among her well-wishers.

Assuming, most likely, that the flare would burn up, McPherson didn’t bother to wear gloves, and his fingerprints were found on it. We have noted in this column frequently how onerous a project it is to get fingerprints processed at the Department of Justice Crime Lab in Eureka. But this one would be considered a high-priority case since it involved a person nearly being burnt up in an arson fire, yet it still took until the end of July to get the results back from DOJ.

The backlog at DOJ is one element in the delay. And the reason for the backlog is the incredible complexity involved — not in taking fingerprints, which had been pioneered sufficiently in Mark Twain’s day — but in closing all the intricate loopholes crafty defense lawyers have developed over the years. In fact, fingerprint evidence has so many loopholes that by and large it is of more value to defense than it is to prosecution. And the process has become incredibly technical! Super Glue, for instance, is used to get latent prints — not the dust we are used to seeing on television shows like CSI.

Once a visitor to the County Courthouse understands these convoluted subtleties, he can then sit back and chuckle at the  arch posturing of defense attorneys as they sneer at police officers for not collecting every article of evidence within a square mile of the crime scene, a show put on to make the cops appear devious, at best, when it is they, the defense hawks, who are being disingenuous. In fact, most of what defense attorneys do in open court is intended to fool their clients into thinking they are getting a fair trial, and that legitimate efforts are being made on their behalf.

In light of the foregoing, consider the motives of Ms. Larson in her cross of Deputy Massey on the stand last week. Keep in mind that the fingerprints were enough for the visiting judge, the Honorable Jeffrey Tauber, to hold McPherson for trial.

Larson: “Did you speak to Ms. Bower after you got the results from DOJ?”

Massey: “I did.”

Larson: “But is there any mention of this conversation in your report?”

Massey: “I don’t believe there is.”

Larson: “Was this prior to August 20th?”

Massey: “I don’t recall.”

Larson: “Did you ever see her van?”

Massey: “I did not.”

Larson: “Do you know who sent you the DOJ report?”

Massey: “I do not.”

Larson: “Did you collect the fingerprints?”

Massey: “I did not.”

Larson: “But you talked to my client?”

Massey: “I did.”

Larson: “And he told you he threw the flare?”

Massey: “He did.”

Larson: “But didn’t he tell you the truck had been there over a month and he’d asked to have it removed?”

Massey: “No.”

Larson: “Oh? Well, didn’t he tell you he thought it would be removed if it had been burnt?”

Massey: “Yes.”

Larson: “Did he seem surprised to find out the van had been occupied?”

Massey: “He did.”

Larson: “That’s all I have, thank you, Deputy Massey. Your honor, the way this is charged, it must be an inhabited dwelling, and the knowledge of it being an inhabited dwelling is an element of the crime.”

DA Eyster: “That’s not what the statute says, judge.”

Judge Tauber: “I think there’s sufficient evidence for a holding order. As for the possession of a deer without a tag, the possession of methamphetamine, and the two-year-old DUI, I think the sitting judge [Hon. Ann Moorman] will be better able to set trial dates for these trailing offenses.”