Hello. My name is Mike. I was convicted of arson, murder and found not guilty of attempted murder. I was coerced into making a confession statement and I am innocent. I need legal help. All I did was leave our apartment to get gas for our car so my wife would have enough fuel to get to work in the morning. While I was gone, a fire occurred which caused my son to die of smoke inhalation and my now ex-wife was burned from a fire that occurred in the living room. Both were in the back of the apartment in their beds when I left to get the gas. Only one officer examined the fire scene and talked to me two days after this fire. He showed me a graph of the fire area and asked me what was in the area that would have caused the fire. I told him I turned a lamp on that was in that area before I left. A post fire investigation was done by four scientists after my arrest. Their report says the burn pattern on the wall matches the lamp. This report also has additional evidence of innocence. Their report was not entered into evidence. The officers who investigated the fire, and interrogated me, found no signs of accelerates, submitted floor samples’ results were negative. He wrote on his report he could not determine the cause and he could not rule out the electrical as a source of ignition. He reported this fire started on the floor and burned up the wall right below where the lamp was. He found no wax, wax residue, or candleholders after examining all the furniture and the floor area in the living room. He then shut the door to the apartment, left and did not go back. He stated he received no other information on the cause of this fire, only the confession statement. The coerced confession statement was I threw a candle into a chair. That statement is what got me arrested. I was told during the interrogation that this was a candle fire and I had taken a candle from a candleholder and I put it into a chair and I needed to explain it. Their pressure was constant and I cracked under it. I buried my son and was worried-about my wife when I made this coerced confession. This officer changed his original findings of this fire starting on the floor below the lamp, to the chair seat during court proceedings. There is so much wrongdoing through the court proceedings, such as, false statements and misrepresentation of facts. Evidence was overlooked and evidence was ignored. The scientists say it is scientifically impossible for me to have thrown a candle into the chair. They say the smoke alarm would have gone on within minutes and my wife would not have been able to breathe toxic fumes coming from a polyurethane chair for 15 minutes and then call 911 for help. The officer knew evidence was not disturbed by water force from the fire department. Because the fire was out before the fire department entered. The fire was confined to one area, and he should have known that there were no candleholders. But yet, he testified that this confession matched his hypotheses of how this fire occurred. The officer could not have included my neighbors in his hypothesis, because he did not question them until after my arrest about what time I left. I have documentation to support my innocence, not just this. I need someone to help free me. Below is a part of a post fire investigation report that was not entered into evidence at my trial.
The Lamp
It is our opinion that the lamp could have provided the necessary ignition scenario to satisfy the facts and physical evidence of this case. Despite looking at the lamp wiring for shorting as well as the breaker box, Detective Watson made no attempt to test the lamp itself, or preserve it as evidence. His initial diagram depicting the area of origin to be between the couch and the chair close to the wall; would indicate that items on the table could have very well been important pieces of evidence and therefore should have been preserved. The lamp had been working incorrectly the day of the fire, requiring several tries to get the lamp to turn on. Witnesses have described the lamp as flickering and not turning on properly. This could have been an early indication of a short inside the lamp. Arcing inside the lamp may not necessarily blow the beaker box, and could cause cardboard inside the lamp to ignite. The arcing could have also sent flying embers onto the lampshade that was made of plastic and paper. This lampshade would have quickly ignited, melted, and dripped to the floor, where it then could have started a fire behind the chair.
The dripping lampshade onto the carpet behind the chair would start the quilts on fire, as well as the chair towards the bottom. This would agree more with the burn patterns on the wall.
Tenants of other apartments in the Ledford’s apartment complex have noted problems with their electrical system at times, resulting in appliances having intermittent electricity. This indicates that the problem the Ledford’s were having with the lamp wasn’t an isolated problem as other tenants were experiencing similar problems.
A fire that progressed from an arc in the lamp to the lampshade, and finally to the carpet, chair, and quilts is more consistent with the timeline that was presented did he trace the electrical lines back to the breaker box to see if any fault could be found. Since interviews with people who bad been in the apartment earlier that day indicated that there were problems with turning the lamp on, as well as the fact that the lamp was located in the area of origin should have warranted giving the lamp a closer look. The lamp was also thrown away, therefore giving other experts no chance to examine the evidence and confirm or deny the hypothesis of Detective Watson.
The lamp in the Ledford apartment was an old lamp, and therefore the chance for a glowing connection hazard was greatly increased. When wire connections age, such as those in a lamp, the wire oxidizes, increasing the resistance of the wire. While the connection will still work properly, the higher resistance in the wire causes the wire to get hot and eventually glow hot. This glowing connection is not arcing, and will happen without the circuit breaker tripping. The glowing connection is then a hazard to ignite any nearby material including the plastic and cardboard insulation present on the inside of lamps.
The diagram from the original fire investigation seems to show that the fire started behind the chair, near the quilt rack, instead of on the chair seat, as was indicated after the confession. The original fire investigation form filled out by Detective Watson Indicate that the fire was of ‘undetermined’ cause. Although indicating that he observed no shorting in the area of origin on the forms, he indicated that shorting in the area of origin couldn’t be eliminated as a source of ignition. Although he indicated that the appliances in the area of origin could be eliminated as causes of origin, if the lamp wasn’t working for people earlier in the day and if he couldn’t eliminate shorting as a possible cause of the fire, why was the lamp disregarded and discarded. It seems that only after receiving a confession from Michael did he change his cause of the fire to incendiary, as well as changing the area of origin, and eliminating the electrical shorting from the fire. Instead of using physical evidence to support the confession, he used the confession as a reason to discard and disregard the physical evidence in this case.
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