Chapter 4: Proof via Evidence
Case Study 1
Overview — Based on: State v. Rodano, 2017 Ohio 1034, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 1009 (2017).
A fire erupted in appellant-defendant Rodano’s residence five weeks after he obtained insurance on his home. The insurance carrier and the police suspected arson. A jury later convicted Rodano of three counts of aggravated arson and one count of insurance fraud. According to the defendant, the home burned because one of his pets knocked over a candle in the living room. Investigators, both federal and state, concluded that the fire’s origin was incendiary, started by a human. Later, the federal agent changed her conclusion to “undetermined origin.”
At the trial, the prosecution presented testimony from Rodano’s acquaintance Lawrence Scott Allen; his girlfriend at the time, Tracy Correll; his brother, David Rodano; and his neighbor, Scott Thom, whose house sustained damage due to the fire; four firefighters; two Allstate employees; and federal agent Joanna Lambert. Rodano presented three witnesses to testify on his behalf.
Allen, an acquaintance of defendant Rodano, testified that he told Jeffrey Koehn, the state fire marshall in charge of the investigation of Rodano’s case, about a conversation he had with Rodano in the summer of 2012. In the conversation Rodano entertained the idea of torching his house to collect on the insurance. Rodano specifically mentioned a scenario where “a Christmas tree could conveniently fall over and knock a candle over.”
Rodano had a housemate who lived in his house for several years. She moved out in the first week of October of 2013 allegedly because of Rodano’s problems with alcohol abuse. She testified that there were candles in the house, but they were used for decoration and were lighted only during the Christmas holidays. She testified that Rodano had talked about having a fire, and had noted that proof of arson would be lacking if one did not use an accelerant. In addition, Rodano’s brother testified that in the late summer or fall of 2013, the defendant indicated that he was about to become rich, and that he was going to set his house on fire and tell anybody who asked that some of his pets knocked over a candle that started a fire. Again, the defendant mentioned that nobody would able to prove arson if he stuck to that story. After the fire, the defendant indicated to his brother that he was going to get money from the fire because he had raised the payout amount on his insurance policy.
At the trial, two Allstate Insurance employees testified that the defendant did hold a homeowner’s policy with their company and that the woman who had lived in the residence was also listed on the policy until the defendant had her removed. The insurance company employees also indicated that the defendant was frustrated about the slow payoff on his policy and that he claimed more than $77,000 in personal property losses caused by the fire.
The federal investigator ultimately decided that the fire was of an undetermined origin, but the indication was that fires caused by candles being knocked over were extremely rare and only 2 percent of fires each year could be attributed to candle mishaps. The federal agent did admit that there were documented fires caused by pets knocking over lighted candles.
The defendant’s expert witness testified that his conclusion on the origin of the fire involved a candle that was the source of the fire that ignited the couch. The expert also indicated that the fire department’s removal of the candle from its original position made it impossible for him to determine whether the fire was an arson or an accidental fire. The conclusion of the defense expert was that the fire was of an undetermined origin.
At the conclusion of the state’s case in chief, the prosecution dismissed Count Four, which related to losses by one of the neighbors whose house was damaged. The defendant was convicted of the remaining four counts, which included three counts of aggravated arson and one count of insurance fraud. The defendant appealed all of his convictions.
Defendant Rodano contended on appeal that the evidence presented by the prosecution was insufficient to support the convictions, and specifically the conditions for aggravated arson in the second and third counts. One of the rationales for his appeal involved an allegation that the convictions were based on circumstantial evidence.
Yes. According to the appeals court, proof of guilt may be made by circumstantial evidence, real evidence, direct evidence, or any combination of the three types of evidence. Direct evidence is said to exist when a witness testifies about a subject matter for which, or of which, the witness has personal knowledge so that the judge or jury is not required to make inferences from the evidence to support the facts that it is to establish. Circumstantial evidence requires that the finder of fact draw or make inferences from other facts that are presented in court to draw a logical conclusion. The reviewing court noted that circumstantial evidence and direct evidence possess the same probative value, and circumstantial evidence carries the same weight for proof of facts that direct evidence carries. An appellate court may sustain a conviction when it is based solely on circumstantial evidence. An arson conviction would be no exception. Moreover, in many arson cases, there are no direct eyewitnesses to the arson, and proof of arson must often rely upon circumstantial evidence. Appellate courts have routinely found that circumstantial evidence can be sufficient to sustain arson convictions.
In this case, although the state’s expert witness testified to an inability to determine the cause of the fire and could not say that the cause was arson, three witnesses testified that prior to the fire the defendant talked about employing arson for the purpose of obtaining insurance money and did so on multiple occasions. Specifically, the defendant used the story about a candle numerous times when talking to prosecution witnesses prior to and after the fire. In addition, the defendant inflated the value of his personal property losses, which would be circumstantial evidence pointing toward arson.
One of the arson counts involved the fire from the defendant’s house spreading to a neighbor’s house, and although there was no testimony concerning whether the fire could have easily spread to the neighbor’s house or how close the two houses were to each other, prosecution photographs indicated that the houses were very close together on small city lots and that the defendant could have known that the fire in his own house would communicate to the neighbor’s home, causing harm.
Ultimately, the reviewing court believed that the prosecution produced sufficient circumstantial evidence that the defendant was aware that his conduct would likely cause harm to his own house as well as to the neighbor’s house and create a substantial risk of serious harm to his neighbor, and that the criminal accusations were properly supported by sufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The reviewing court affirmed the defendant’s convictions even though they were based completely on circumstantial evidence and there was no direct evidence that the defendant started the fire.
See Chapter 4, Section 4.11.
Case Study 2
Overview — Based on: State v. Seagraves, 2010 Ohio 308, 2010 Ohio App. LEXIS 246 (2010).
The prosecutor brought charges against Defendant Seagraves along with two others, for committing larceny of diesel fuel from a Speedway fuel-filling station on three separate dates. The government presented a primarily circumstantial evidence case. The company surveillance video indicated that on three occasions codefendant Amorine’s white van, displaying magnetic signs reading “Service Vehicle,” was parked on top of the diesel fill cap that connected to the storage tanks. During the investigation of the filling station complaint, a detective reviewed the video and identified a Buick motor vehicle, owned by codefendant Amorine, that he determined to be a blocker for the van. On one occasion, a male resembling Defendant Seagraves was present in the station’s parking lot and seen entering the store from the direction where the van was parked. A “Crime Stoppers” tip identified Seagraves as being the male in the still photo made from one of the video recordings. A video taken on another occasion when diesel fuel was stolen revealed substantially the same picture. The prosecutor presented evidence that co-defendant Amorine purchased three “Service Vehicle” magnetic signs around March 6, 2008, prior to the thefts alleged in this case. In addition, on the three occasions when the white van was parked over the diesel fill cap, the store’s computer issued alarm reports showing a large loss of fuel. Police also found the white van belonging to Amorine, which had been impounded in Columbus, Ohio. An inspection of the van revealed that it had been modified with additional wiring, batteries, a power inverter, and air shocks. Police also discovered that a hole had been cut in the van’s floor that would allow access to the filing station’s diesel cap.
Seagraves contended that there was no direct evidence that the filling station did not consent to the taking of the fuel, and there was only circumstantial evidence that the station had not consented to the fuel removal. Although the defendant presented an alibi defense for some of the days in question and offered evidence that he might have been present at a different Speedway on one of the dates, the jury evidently did not believe the defendant’s story and rendered a verdict of guilty for the crimes as charged.
Yes. As a strong general rule, courts hold that circumstantial evidence and direct evidence inherently possess the same weight and value, and therefore should be subjected to the same standards of proof. When the state relies on circumstantial evidence to prove an essential element of the offense charged, there is no need for such evidence to be irreconcilable with any reasonable theory of innocence in order to support a conviction. See Chapter 4, Section 4.11.
Yes. The store clerk, when faced with the fact of diesel fuel losses that were not explained by sales, contacted the sheriff’s office to report the missing fuel. This conduct by the store clerk serves as circumstantial evidence that the store and the clerk were not consenting to the removal of diesel fuel without having been compensated for its value.
Yes. Since circumstantial evidence has the same weight as direct evidence, a case that contained only circumstantial evidence would support a conviction. In this case, there was primarily circumstantial evidence that the defendant and his friend were responsible for the removal of the fuel. There was some direct evidence that the defendant was present on one of the occasions, but the facts that his van was present at all of the thefts and that his friend purchased the magnetic signs that were affixed to the van point toward the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt.
See Chapter 4, Section 4.11(B).