After the jury had filed out, Peter Giannini said to the judge, "Mr. Orr says he doesn't want to be here for the jury instructions and he'd just as soon go back, if that's okay with the court."
The judge said he'd have to take a waiver on that, and he informed the defendant of his right to remain and hear arguments about jury instructions, but John Orr said to the judge, whom he distrusted for being a former prosecutor, "It's getting old here. I'd like to use the time to relax."
So even the defendant, on trial for his very life, couldn't bear any more of the wandering convoluted verbosity that passes for discourse in the courtrooms of the most litigious nation on the planet. It seemed that the law and everybody in it needed several semesters of Remedial English 101, but you'd still have to hold the lawyers' family members hostage to make them stop beginning questions with, "At some point in time . . ."
Since the case of the People v. John Orr was based entirely on circumstantial evidence, the boilerplate jury instruction on that issue might seem important. The judge read the following to jurors: "Circumstantial evidence is evidence that, if found to be true, proves a fact from which an inference of the existence of another fact may be drawn. An inference is a deduction of fact that may logically and reasonably be drawn from another fact or group of facts, established by the evidence."
Probably about 5 percent of nonlawyers and 10 percent of lawyers actually understand that instruction, which is recited daily in the courtrooms of our land. So that makes it just about perfect for all of the strange fish that lazily glide, blowing gas bubbles that pop ineffectually on the surface of the litigation tanks in which they live and breed.
The next instruction, concerning felony murder by arson, was a repeat from eons earlier in the trial. This one was exceedingly understandable and exceedingly preposterous: "In considering count one through four, evidence has been introduced for the purpose of showing that the defendant committed crimes other than those for which he is on trial. This evidence, if believed, may not be considered by you to prove that the defendant is a person of bad character, or that he has a disposition to commit crimes."
To which a juror could only say, "Am I a silly goose! How could I ever think that a person is bad when all he's done, according to you, is try to burn down California from Fresno to Los Angeles?"
The judge explained that there would first be a closing argument by the people, followed by one from the defense, and a rebuttal by the people because they have the burden of proof. And then, at long last, Mike Cabral stood up.
After greeting and thanking the jury for enduring testimony from a hundred witnesses, he set out to explain just what it had all been about. And this was the kind of arena where a bulldog can enter a ring and out-point Pomeranians and poodles. The downtown jury was looking at someone like them. He'd never tried to be a wordsmith. In fact, he'd sometimes tangle tenses and scramble syntax and drop pronouns like George Bush the elder and the younger, but unlike the other fellows from Yale, Cabral was clearly a blue-collar guy who couldn't look preppy if you dressed him in the cap and gown of Jesus College, Oxford.
He'd never talked down to the jury because he seemed to be down there with them. Like maybe a car mechanic who'd toughed it out at night school. Not for him, soaring oratory. He did it by doing what bulldogs do: plodding forward relentlessly. Everybody who'd watched him work offered similar descriptive language: he was a relentless, dogged lawyer.
John Orr, not an admirer of lawyers in general, had one observation to make about this prosecutor's work ethic that he hadn't made about any other attorney: "Cabral never made a mistake."
"Now, all the experts that you heard," Cabral began, "and there was a handful of them, agree that fire generally burns up and out. The fire triangle requires three sides: oxygen, heat, and you still don't get a fire without fuel on the third side. If you take out one of the sides, your fire goes out. It's actually very simple to understand."
That was his message, and he kept going back to it throughout his argument. Then he talked about experts agreeing that a fire will take the path of least resistance, burning up, mushrooming along a ceiling, seeking air. He talked about the various uncharged crimes, all of those where incendiary devices were used.
And after bombarding them with so many of those M. O. crimes, he might've been in danger of losing them to crossword puzzles, but he changed the pace and spoke of a witness who'd described the arson suspect as "kind of chubby."
"Now you know," Cabral said, "when people use words such as chubby and average build, it's obviously subjective. One man's chubby is another man's slim. There's no way of quantifying those types of terms. Some people might even say I'm chubby, but I don't happen to think so."
And of course, those jurors from the inner city-folks who'd never heard of arugula with tomato aspic, or chicory and beet root salad, and didn't know that from West Hollywood to Malibu it was a misdemeanor to eat a French fry, folks who porked out on chimichangas, burritos, and Fat Burgers-had to love it. He was one of them, saying that all the confusing technical crap they'd been listening to for weeks was really simple after all!
Cabral discussed Marv Casey's fire and the Bakersfield witness Laverne Andress, who'd discovered the incendiary device, and that allowed Cabral to loop back to the Ole's fire by way of making a comparison: "Now, remember what Chief Eisele said. When he got to the fire, what did he see coming out the southwest door, but a blue flame. Well, Laverne Andress tells us what that blue flame was. It was the polyfoam burning.
"And there was one other thing that Chief Eisele said: he said that the fire was hissing. And what did Laverne Andress hear? She heard a hissing sound. And that erupted into blue flame clear up into the ceiling. A hissing sound. Both fires. Blue flame. The people submit: polyfoam. Both fires."
The jury could not fail to make his connection. Bakersfield. Fingerprint. Polyfoam. Hissing. CraftMart. Ole's. Attic irrelevant.
He discussed the fire that had occurred months after the Ole's calamity, at Ole's sister store. He talked about the manuscript and how it depicted an actual event like that, implying that the novel was a diary.
He went through all of it: the tracking device, and how, when John Orr had found it, he didn't confront anyone about it. Once again, he tied the defendant into the Los Angeles fire series by reminding the jury that John Orr had pled guilty to that Builder's Emporium fire.
Then Mike Cabral picked up Points of Origin and said, "I want to read one chapter of the book."
He began: " 'The hardware business prospered in the small community of South Pasadena. . . . Madeline Paulson went there at least twice a week to shop. . . . Tonight she was baby-sitting with her three-year-old grandson, Matthew. He wasn't sleepy so she took him to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream store next to Cal's. While standing in the parking lot sharing a chocolate mint cone, she decided to entertain Matthew by walking through Cal's. ... In less than six minutes, both Madeline and Matthew would be dead.' "
The courtroom was very quiet indeed when Cabral got to the encounter with the arsonist: " 'As she rounded the corner, she almost ran into a man walking with his hands in his pockets. Both were startled as she saw that they wouldn't collide. She heard his breath suck in, and he mumbled his apologies as he continued on. She recovered quickly too, and walked toward the back of the store.
" 'Minutes later, she heard a shrill whistling noise. . . . She then heard excited talking and the word, "Fire!" She started toward the sound, realizing now it was a smoke detector. She saw a slight haze at the ceiling level. Her heart raced, and as she rounded the corner, she saw that the smoke was now swirling around the ceiling like a whirlwind.
'The fire, originating in polyurethane cushions, raced to the ceiling, and within forty-five seconds, one-thousand-degree temperatures were being pushed toward the annex door opening. . . . The annex opening was protected by a metal-clad door, designed to close when a lightweight metal link melted from fire and allowed the door to roll down its track, closing and preventing
fire spread into the main store. The design was for fires happening after hours when no one was inside, not for hours when the store was occupied. It was a fatal design.
" 'Madeline held Matthew close to her, and stopped briefly to look down the aisle where she saw the fire boiling out of the displays fifty feet away. She stared at the fire, not yet feeling the heat, fascinated, yet terrified. . . . The fire burned through a light fixture and shorted out all the lights in the annex . . . leaving Madeline, Matthew, one other man, and three employees in complete darkness.
" 'Quickly, the tremendous heat breached the attic above the fire and found a ready source of oxygen. The smoke, just above head level when the lights went out, now crashed down on the heads of Madeline and Matthew. Instinctively, they dropped to the floor as they heard the black man's voice. She screamed back at him and within seconds he was at their side. Still in total darkness, the toxic smoke attacking their lungs, the three crawled. . . . The smoke, choking and thick, was stealing their oxygen quickly and causing disorientation.
" 'He held Madeline's hand as Matthew clung to her neck. She heard Matthew's sobs as well as her own. She now felt the heat and saw flames in front of them. She screamed at the employee as he squeezed her hand tightly, continuing down the aisle toward the fire. . . . He suddenly realized he was going the wrong way, turned back and they reversed their direction. . . . She felt herself losing her grip on Matthew and his grip loosened from her neck, and slipped down her body as they crawled.
" 'Unable to go any further, she felt the employee's hand drop hers. He continued on. The last thing she heard was a tremendous roar as the fire burned through the roof and vented to the outside. The smoke momentarily lifted, but was then replaced by solid fire as the contents of the annex exploded into flames. Their last breaths were of eight-hundred-degree heat that sealed their throats closed.
" 'When Madeline's body was found, she was on her back with Matthew clinging to her ankles. The employee leading them was found face down five feet in front of Madeline, just twenty feet short of an open fire escape door. One other employee had managed to escape and collapsed outside. Ironically, the other dead employee and customer were also found within ten feet of Madeline.
" 'There was never a follow-up investigation. The fire was ineptly termed accidental. Aaron was so furious that he set a nearly identical fire in Hollywood, at another hardware store. The investigating agency termed the fire arson, but no correlation was made to the Cal's fire. Aaron wanted the Cal's fire to be called arson. He loved the inadvertent attention he derived from the newspaper coverage, and hated it when he wasn't properly recognized.' "
Cabral was not yet ready to read the final lines, which described how the arsonist felt about the people he'd killed. When he put down the manuscript there were jurors staring at John Orr, and the courtroom was very very still.
The prosecutor said, "The people submit to you that chapter six of this book is the Ole's fire. It describes the Ole's fire in detail, even down to the ice cream store."
Like most lawyers, Cabral couldn't leave a word unsaid, and he then sent jurors slumbering with a lot of talk about the technical testimony they'd heard. However, what was possibly the most remarkable thing about this prosecutor was his uncanny recall of what those hundred witnesses had said during the month of testimony. Seldom did he misstate the evidence, as often happens in long closing arguments after a complicated trial. Jurors could've hoped that he'd kept things more chronological, but nothing was missing. He just didn't forget anything, and that made for a tedious but always amazing performance.
Cabral had begun talking at 9:30 a. M., and other than during the lunch break, was still at it when court adjourned at 4:00 that afternoon.
The next morning the crossword puzzler was late, but after she arrived, Cabral resumed his closing argument by launching his assault on all of the investigators who had called the fire an accident. Probably his most scathing criticism was reserved for Sergeant Jack Palmer of the L. A. County Sheriffs Department.
"He spent about an hour, hour and a half before making his determination," Cabral said. "The people submit to you that was inappropriate. He had four dead citizens. He doesn't talk to Mr. Obdam until the next day, after he's already made his decision. He's already reached the conclusion before he even talked to a single witness who could tell him what happened inside that building. And the people submit that that is a fatal flaw, and that flows to every conclusion of every investigator who didn't go inside that building and dig it out. Because they all say only one thing: I relied on Sergeant Palmer.
"He just said, a high fire here. Okay. Can't eliminate electrical in the attic. Let's go home. Let's pack up our stuff and let's go. We're done. We've been here an hour and a half. Potential homicide off our hands. We've done all we need to do. We don't need to talk to any witnesses. But oh, tomorrow, I'll go talk to the one who was the last person out of the fire to see what they think."
Cabral related once again, from memory, the testimony of the defendant's friend, Jim Allen of the Fire Marshal's Office, about how he and John Orr were not satisfied with the finding of accidental fire. What was significant was that Jim Allen had never been told by his friend John Orr that he'd been at the scene of all three fires on that night.
And then Cabral disparaged the opinions of defense experts. Cabral kept pointing out that virtually none of the experts had talked to any of the witnesses the jury had heard. It was effective to let jurors know that they'd heard testimony from the lips of survivors that expert witnesses had never heard before they'd arrived at the attic-fire conclusion.
And finally, at noon, when a lunch break was imminent, Mike Cabral said, "The people submit that the evidence is clear, the evidence is incontrovertible, that on October tenth, 1984, the defendant, John Leonard Orr, entered Ole's Home Center shortly before eight p. M. That he walked into that location, down to the aisle where the polyfoam is stored, placed a device consisting of the cigarette, three matches, a rubber band, and a piece of yellow lined paper into that polyfoam. And after he exited that store, that device ignited a fire which, within minutes, spread throughout the bottom of the area, caused the flashover, and took the lives of Jimmy Cetina, Matthew Troidl, Ada Deal, and Carolyn Krause. And I ask you to return a verdict as to guilty on those four counts. Thank you."
After lunch that day, Sandra Flannery summarized the other counts of arson that she maintained were linked by modus operandi.
She said, "As to those counts, when compared one to another, the evidence also shows patterns and similarities which emerged, that dispute any type of explanation by which the defense could try to explain away these similarities. These patterns, these similarities, are like common threads of facts and circumstances that seem to reappear through these counts. They are the mark of a human hand, because we humans, whether we like it or not, are creatures of habit, are we not?"
She first discussed the Kennington fire, and that John Orr had arrived before the first engine and had begun videotaping while the fire was still burning, when there was not a fire engine in sight. She discussed that on a portion of the tape the house was not on fire, denoting that he'd taken that video at another time, as a before-and-after lesson.
She discussed the Warner Brothers fire, and that a security guard had testified that the defendant was also at that fire while it was burning, and that upon being called by Steve Patterson, the defendant had pretended not to know how to get there.
She next talked about the Hilldale and San Augustine fires and she gave a compelling Teletrac argument: "Well, we know that the defendant was at the location very early on. We know that he showed up at the San Augustine fire within one to two minutes, even though the dispatch to the San Augustine fire gave the wrong location. And yet, John Orr, once again, in his remarkable timing, is there"
Then Sandra Flannery turned to her big case, the College Hills disaster. She talked about how the defendant had been seen by other firefighters near the area of origin in the ea
rly stages of the fire, once again emphasizing his "remarkable timing." And she discussed her witnesses, the air force major and the apartment-house resident who'd lived in the epicenter of the disaster, both of whom had identified John Orr after the news coverage of his arrest.
Sandra Flannery gave a try at sanitizing the testimony of the woman in the apartment building who'd identified John Orr just prior to this trial, but had never done so before, even though he was in her bathroom. But at last she was forced to say, "The value of that experience is up to you to weigh and decide."
Sandra Flannery concluded her argument at 4:00 p. M. by implying that John Orr had dumped his partner Don Yeager out of the arson unit because he didn't want a lot of investigation into Glendale's fire of the century. Then she spoke the truest words that the jury had heard thus far: "Although we've gone on endlessly . . ."
After that apology, she said, "I'm going to ask you, in evaluating this evidence, to understand that these patterns that emerge . . . these things that consistently come up make one thing clear, it's impossible for all of these things to arbitrarily coincide in time and space with innocent explanations. All of these things as they converge create a clear pattern of circumstantial evidence which has only one reasonable interpretation: that John Orr set these fires.
"And that's why I'm asking you to return a verdict of guilty as to these remaining counts, five through twenty-five. And I'm asking you to find him also guilty of the special allegations on these counts. And I thank you very much for listening to me today."
On Wednesday, June 10, five weeks into trial, Ed Rucker was first up for the defense's closing argument, and he gave the jury a dose of truth when he said, "Unfortunately, in this particular case, you've been put under a terrible burden. There's a great obstacle, and I think it's only right we talk about it. Let's be straight with each other, okay? You've heard evidence that John Orr pled guilty to setting fires. Come on, that's got to affect you. We're rational people, but we're emotional people. And an emotion can sometimes blow away, in the wind of anger, our ability to be rational and our ability to do what we know is right.
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