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State v. Garrett12/1/2005
rs of the Alcorn family to "get a grasp" of the situation and learned from them that they had heard an explosion and had seen the defendant running around the house yelling and perhaps trying to get into the house. Mr. Miller then interviewed the defendant after the fire and recounted that the defendant said that in the evening before the fire, the defendant and the victim had been out drinking, they returned home, and fell asleep in the living room before retiring to the bedroom. Mr. Roland testified that the defendant told him that he had awakened, smelled smoke, yelled for the victim, and started out of the house. The defendant said that he noticed the victim heading for the kitchen. In a later interview, the defendant told Mr. Roland that he was leading the victim out of the bedroom by the hand when she jerked away and went toward the kitchen. Mr. Roland presented audiotapes and transcripts of the defendant's statements.
On cross-examination, Mr. Roland testified that the victim appeared to have been dressed for bed. He recalled that the defendant's hair was singed and that one hand was bandaged. After the fire, the defendant did not appear to be upset or intoxicated. Mr. Roland acknowledged that before the officers collected evidence on the evening of February 24, the fire department had cleaned the floor in the house with a booster hose. He remembered that water stood in the kitchen floor. When, in reference to a photograph, Mr. Roland was asked about a clean blue cigarette lighter that appeared out of place on the charred dresser in the bedroom, he agreed that someone must have left the lighter there after the fire and that its presence could signify contamination of the crime scene.
The TBI analyst who tested the material samples collected by Kenneth Porter and James Cooper testified that a section of the bedspread and the plastic container from the kitchen, the smoke detector, and living room debris collected from near the front door tested positively for the presence of a kerosene range distillate. The defendant's trousers and shirt contained no distillate.
On cross-examination, the TBI analyst testified that she received from Kenneth Porter a soil sample taken from beneath the suspected point of fire origin in the front room floor, a piece of carpet taken from the same location on the front room floor, a ten- gallon plastic can found behind the house, and liquid collected from the driveway. None of these samples contained any chemical distillates. A sample of wood flooring taken by Mr. Porter from beneath the front door sill revealed the presence of terpenes, but the analyst explained that the presence of this chemical probably resulted from the use of wood preservative on the door or the wood floor. The wood samples contained no kerosene range distillate. The analyst acknowledged that kerosene range distillate presence on some of Mr. Miller's samples could have resulted from transference by handling by the officers. She admitted that kerosene could have been present in some of the samples for an extended period of time.
James Cooper testified that he had retired as an agent of the United States Department of Treasury Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). As an ATF agent, he had been a certified fire investigator and a fire-cause and origin specialist. Because local authorities had requested that he assist in investigating the fire that killed the victim, he inspected the house on the evening of February 24, after the fire department had washed the flooring with a booster hose. He opined that the washing did not obstruct or hamper his observation of the burn pattern. He concluded that the fire began in the front room. He found no evidence of an electri
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