By Mark Gutglueck
This week, Deputy District Attorney Justin Crocker put the finishing touches on what may prove the prosecutorial masterpiece of his career, telling the jury that despite the virtually entirely circumstantial nature of the case against Justin Halstenberg, the only reasonable interpretation of the series of coincidences placing him at or near the scene of the ignition points for three blazes on September 5, 2024 that culminated in the Line Fire and which link him to the devices that lit them is that the defendant is an arsonist responsible for setting what grew to become the fourth most destructive fire in San Benardino County history.
Opening statements and initial testimony in the case began on April 14. The prosecution called 31 witnesses, the lion’s share of whom were used to establish the articulating pieces of the theory of Halstenberg’s guilt and a handful of whom were intended to illustrate the sheer extent of the destructiveness of the fire. The defense, for its part, pursued a strategy of seeking to show contradictions and weaknesses in the prosecutions theory by aggressive cross examination of several of the prosecution witnesses while Crocker and his co-counsel, Deputy District Attorney Andrew Crocker pursued their case-in-chief. After the prosecution rested, in putting on its case-in-chief, the defense limited itself to calling only a single witness of its own and recalling to the witness stand two of the prosecution’s witnesses in seeking to emphasize that investigators had very early on in the process settled upon Halstenberg as the primary and then very rapidly the only suspect while ignoring other potential culprits and causes of the fire.
The prosecution propounded that Halstenberg and Halstenberg alone was responsible for setting the fire and that a litany of facts proved that. Among those facts :
• The Line Fire was touched off in a field of dry vegetation just a few feet of the roadway along a stretch of Baseline Road in east Highland at 5:45 p.m. on September 5, 2024
• The Line Fire was the third fire in Highland that day
• Another grass fires had been lit at another location in Highland, on Bacon Lane less than a mile distant from the Line Fire’s point of origin some time shortly before it was reported at 4:11 p.m.
• Another fire was lit along Baseline Road some 180 feet east of the ignition point for the Line Fire at around 4:26 p.m.,
• Video footage from residences, vehicles and the Highland Fire Department’s Fire Station located on Baseline Road show that Halstenberg’s distinctive 4-door short-bed white Chevrolet Silverado truck was in the area proximate to where those fires started at the times just prior to, while and after they were sparked
• Fire and arson investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection found objects – coins, blue-lined yellow paper, an industrial staple – at the locations where the two fires that preceded the Line Fire on September 5 and the Line Fire originated.
• Those investigators concluded the coins, blue-lined yellow paper, the heavy-duty staple – were components of a makeshift incendiary device used to start those fires
• Two of those components – coins and blue-lined yellow paper – were found in Halstenberg’s truck when he was arrested on suspicion of being the Line Fire arsonist on September 10, 2024
• There were hundreds of heavy-duty industrial staples in a tool chest in a backyard workshop at Halstenberg’s residence in Norco
• A license plate reader at the San Manuel Casino in Highland and multiple security videos at that gaming establishment place him there from 12:04 in the early afternoon until 1:34 p.m..
• Multiple traffic cameras/license plate readers located at various positions and intersections around Highland that are operated by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which doubles as the police department in the City of Highland, placed Halstenberg in Highland throughout the afternoon, late afternoon, early evening and night of September 5, 2014;
• T-Mobile cell phone service records show Halstenberg appears to have been in Highland from around noon until the mid-afternoon and in Highland from around 6:30 that evening until late that night;
• Halstenberg’s phone was powered off at 3:26 p.m. until 6:44 p.m., a crucial three hour-and-18 minute gap during which all three fires in Highland were lit, a ploy prosecutors suggested was a deliberate attempt by Halstenberg to thwart any investigation into his involvement in starting those fires
• Security camera video footage shows Halstenberg’s truck as he drives it around the parking lot at the San Manuel Village in Highland, a vantage point from which the glowing fire in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains could be seen;
• During an interrogation of Halstenberg conducted on September 10, 2024 by San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Detective Jacob Hernandez and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Battalion Chief Matthew Kirkhart, Halstenberg initially consistently maintained he was not in Highland on September 5, relenting only when he was confronted with time-date stamped photos and video still that established he was there;
• Halstenberg, after conceding that he had gone to the San Manuel Casino on September 5, insisted that he had returned to his home in Norco thereafter and that he had no recollection whatsoever of having remained in Highland for the next ten hours;
• A series of what investigators have concluded were arson fires took place in the expansive acreage containing dry vegetation north of Granite Hill Drive in Jurupa Valley around mid-year 2023, including ones lit on June 27, July 1 and July 9 of that year.
• California Department of Forestry and Fire Division investigators concluded that several of the 2023 Granite Hill field fires involved incendiary devices that consisted of a Marlboro brand cigarette box stuffed with a heavy-duty mechanics shop paper towel and coins or metal objects such as a bolt or bolts to give the device weight and hold the paper towel in place, which were lit and thrown from a moving vehicle into the parched vegetation by the side of the road;
• A Marlboro box was found in a bucket in the bed of Halstenberg’s truck.
• When a search warrant for Halstenberg’s premises was executed in conjunction with his arrest on September 10, investigators found a package of heavy-duty mechanics shop paper towels in the workshop located in the backyard of Halstenberg’s residence.
• A criminalist in the sheriff’s department’s crime lab testified that coins found on the street several feet away from the point of origin of the Line Fire in Highland believed to be the components of an incendiary device, a cigarette box found on the Granite Hill acreage in Jurupa Valley and a paper mechanics shop towel also found on the Granite Hill acreage contained DNA traces consistent with Halstenberg’s.

Deputy public defenders Luke Byward and Justin Ewaniszyk sought to cast doubt on the prosecution theory by establishing that
• No intact incendiary devices such as the ones described by investigators had been found at the fire sites;
• The investigators did not ever recreate either of the types of incendiary devices they alleged that Halstenberg used to start the fires in San Bernardino and Riverside counties nor tested them to show they could remain intact when thrown from a moving vehicle or succeed in touching off a fire
• The single blue-lined yellow paper found in Halstenberg’s truck did not match the double blue-lined paper found at the point of origin of the Bacon Lane Fire on September 5;
• The investigators did not adequately consider or investigate whether the Line Fire had originated as a result of arson but rather from some other cause involving motor vehicles traveling at a distance of ten-to-twenty feet away from where the fires began;
• Halstenberg, despite being isolated, handcuffed and denied legal counsel in violation of his Fifth Amendment and Sixth Amendment rights and being subjected to the intense and concentrated focus of aggressive investigators who used both unethical and legally questionable pressure tactics including false representations citing nonexistent evidence implicating him, at no time admitted to lighting the fires he was being accused of starting.

On Wednesday, May 7, the prosecution rested its case. The defense, after calling a surprise witness, Sheriff’s Department Fingerprint Examiner Raelynn Steele, who testified that Halstenberg’s fingerprints were not detected on a number of items the prosecution alleged had been handled by the defendant during his fire-setting spree, recalled to the stand Sheriff’s Detective Lorraine Bertetto and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Battalion Chief Matthew Kirkhart, questioning them about the interrogations of Halstenberg and the tactics used in trying to get him to make an admission of guilt, revisiting how the questioning persisted even after Halstenberg expressed wanting to have a lawyer, emphasizing the underhanded means to which the defendant was subjected. Thereafter, the defense rested.
On Monday, May 12, Crocker kicked off the trial’s closing arguments, framing the case as one in which the evidence showed no one other than Halstenberg could have set the fires in Highland on September 5, including the one that grew into the 43,870-acre Line Fire.
In the courtroom for Crocker’s remarks were a number of his and Peppler’s colleagues from the district attorney’s office, as well as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection battalion chief who oversaw the investigation into the Lion Fire, Matthew Kirkhart and the three arson investigators from his agency he oversaw throughout the case – Fire Captain Michael Franklin, Fire Captain Joshua Williams and Fire Captain Andrew Arthen – as well as the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department detective who worked the case, Jacob Hernandez.
Halstenberg was a dedicated firestarter, Crocker said, waiting “over a year” for the perfect opportunity to strike, “honing his craft” with the multiple fires he started in Jurupa Valley.
That ideal opportunity arrived on September 5, Crocker said, a day toward the end of the summer with dry vegetation abounding and the temperature “over 100 degrees”
Halstenberg began “driving around, looking for the perfect place, looking for the perfect moment to cause this damage… and finally… to light the fire he always wanted… the one that took off, the one we know as the Line Fire.”
Crocker emphasized that this was for Halstenberg the culmination of practice and “waiting… He had tried it before” having had “a little bit” of satisfaction at creating a fire but those earlier efforts were nothing like “the big one. When the big one his, he doesn’t just leave. He kept driving around Highland admiring what he had set off.”
Halstenberg spent more than nine-and-a-half hours, both before and after the fire was started, driving around Highland on what was for him one of the most glorious days of his life, the prosecutor said.
Callously and with no regard for others, Crocker said, Halstenberg indulged his pyrophilia.
“Firefighters are trying to stop this,” Crocker said. “First responders are trying to contain the fire. Homeowners are concerned and asking, ‘Should I leave my house?’ As they are going through that, what is the defendant doing? Admiring his work.”
Halstenberg was not on trial for the 2023 fires in Riverside County, but those fires and Halstenberg’s involvement in them were relevant considerations, Crocker said.
“Why? Crocker asked, rhetorically. “Because they lend context to the defendant’s mental state. This is someone with experience, who has lit fires before. He knows how to build incendiary devices.” Halstenberg built five devices using cigarette boxes and paper towels and coins in 2023, Crocker said, and those coins became a signature, what Crocker said was Halstenberg’s “calling card.” The region’s fire investigators had heard or read about coins being used in incendiary devices but never encountered them or saw them with their own eyes until Justin Halstenberg became brought them into Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
In addition Crocker said, his DNA left behind on a cigarette box and on a paper towel near the scene of the fires north of Granite Hill Drive implicates Halstenberg, as does the use of coins in construction the incendiary devices used there.
On September 5, Crocker said, Halstenberg had driven his “truck with 320,000-plus miles on it around the east end of Highland” to the breaking limit. As if he were addressing Halstenberg directly, the prosecutor asked, “What are you doing pushing this truck all around Highland?” Crocker answered his own question for the defendant.
“What he is doing is looking for his opportunity.”
Crocker offered a timeline of Halstenberg’s movement and action on September 5.
At 11:07 a.m., Crocker said, Halstenberg “drove away from his home in Norco. An hour later he arrived at the casino to gamble for little bit.”
Whether he had gone to Highland with the specific intent of starting the big fire that is not known, Crocker said. But, the prosecutor said, “It was just a matter of time,” before Halstenberg took the action he had been preparing.
“As long as he’s got a pad of paper and coins, he can make that decision on any given day,” Crocker said.
Moreover, according to Crocker, an incendiary device composed of everyday items such as coins and notebook paper provided the advantage of being unidentifiable as an arson tool. The prosecutor noted that having a “blowtorch would be tough to explain,” whereas there could always be an “innocent explanation for a pad of yellow paper.” Crocker said Halstenberg’s response to the investigators when he confronted with the presence of the paper and coins that those “could be anything” was “interesting.”
By 1:36 p.m, Crocker said, Halstenberg had left the casino. By 2:20 p.m., Crocker said, Halstenberg’s cellular device’s interaction with cell towers in the areas showed he was driving around Highland “within the confines of East Highland Ranch.” When he was asked about his whereabouts at that time by investigators on September 10, Crocker reminded the jury, Halstenberg claimed he wasn’t there.
When you analyze all the evidence… look at the totality of the evidence, it is hard to see if there is any reasonable conclusion other than the defendant is the arsonist who started these fires. Crocker asked rhetorically what Halstenberg was doing by pushing his truck to the breaking point in that day’s 108-degree Fahrenheit temperature, driving all over Highland. “He is looking for his opportunity,” he answered.
At 3:12 p.m., Halstenberg was using the weather app on his phone, and at 3:13 p.m. he signed onto his phone’s YouTube app. While it is unknown what Halstenberg was watching while on YouTube, Crocker noted that the cache on his phone was loaded with deleted videos of fires. From 3:18 p.m. until 3:24 p.m. he was on his phone’s Google Maps app, according to Crocker, who said that the map Halstenberg was looking was a “blank canvas” that he hoped “to paint with fire.”
At the same time, Crocker said, Halstenberg was thinking about how he would be able to get away with what he was about to do. In that regard, Crocker said, at 3:25 p.m., he shut his phone off so that after the fact the authorities would be unable to trace his movements. Crocker said Halstenberg was driving around, looking for a place without nearby houses where what he was about to do might be caught on a security video and where he could throw an incendiary device out of his window into a patch of dry vegetation without any witnesses seeing him.
At 3:25, Halstenberg’s phone went off the communication network, Crocker said, but his efforts to leave no evidence that he was in Highland over the next two critical hours were unsuccessful, as his truck was spotted on traffic video cameras at 3:37 p.m. heading eastbound on Baseline Road and at 3:41 p.m. having turned around to head westbound on Baseline as he was making a right turn to head north on Wheeler Avenue.
At 3:56 p.m., according to Crocker he was picked up on two household security video cameras driving on Randall Lane, a block away from the location of the first of the fires in Highland that day, on Bacon Lane, and at 4:05 p.m., a home security camera on Bacon Lane captured wisps of smoke rising in the air. Thereafter, at 4:11 p.m., a phone call reporting the fire on Bacon Lane came into the emergency dispatch center.
At 4:25 p.m. a traffic camera showed his truck southbound on Weaver coming from the site of the Bacon Lane Fire. At 4:27 his truck is westbound on Baseline on Baseline and then turns left to head south on Weaver.
Between 4:26 p.m. and 4:29 p.m., Crocker said, Richard Scott was pulled over to the side of Baseline Road, stomping out a fire he had spotted as he was driving home. It was at that point, the prosecutor said, that Scott saw a white truck pass by him heading west on Baseline. Less than a minute later, Halstenberg passed the fire station, located less than a half mile east on Baseline, his distinctive white truck visible on that facility’s video camera. At 4:27 p.m., Crocker said, Halstenerg reached Weaver Street where her turned south.
At that point, according to the prosecutor, Halstenberg was accutely conscious that he had been seen in close proximity to a fire he had started, and he was intent on getting away.
By 4:37 p.m., Crocker said, the defendant had circled around and was again heading eastbound on Baselineadn approaching the Churh Street, back toward the scene of the fire he had started and which Scott had smothered in its infancy. The prosecutor noted, deprecatingly, that the defense team had insinuated that Scott was the arsonist.
For almost an hour thereafter, Crocker said Halstenberg, who by his own admission had no reason to be in Highland, remained there.
At 5:34, Crocker said, Halstenberg was in his truck, heading southbound on Weaver and made a left turn to head eastbound on Baseline.
At 5:43 p.m., James Fee, a resident of east Highland was heading west out Baseline when he was obliged to swing into the eastbound lane to avoid Halstenberg as he was backing out from the shoulder of the road into the westbound lane.
A minute later, at 5:44 p.m. the front viewing video camera in a Tesla being driven east on Baseline by Highland Resident Marlene Acuna at 5:44 captures the defendant in his white truck going west on Baseline. Some 37 seconds later, the nascent Line Fire, burning in a confined area within some chaparral just off the roadway on the north side of Baseline looms into the Tesla camera’s field of view.
About 32 seconds later, Halstenberg is seen on a traffic camera driving westbound on Baseline through the Baseline and Weaver intersection.
At 5:45 p.m. Acuna, who had driven a short distance past the fire to the east, made a u-turn and was headed west to report the fire to the fire station,
At that point, according to Crocker, “She [Acuna] is close behind him [Halstenberg], in his rear view mirror,” said Crocker. “The fire is picking up. He is barely driving. His work is finally taking off.”
At 5:48 the fire engine was rolling out from the CalFire fire station in response to the Line Fire.
By 6:01 p.m., the firefighters were doing there best to bring the fire under control, Crocker said.
Soon thereafter, however, the fire in the field next to Baseline reached the slope heading up into the foothills and accelerated and expanded beyond the ability of the firefighters to confine it.
According to Crocker, Halstenberg then turned on his phone at 6:44 p.m.. At 6:44 p.m. and 6:47 p.m. he was, Crocker said, “back on the network, looking for media reports about the fire.
At that point, the prosecutor said, Halstenberg had wrought everything he had been waiting for, and he had to sit there and revel in what he had done.
“He is driving around, admiring his work,” Crocker said.
At 6:50 p.m., according to Crocker, the global position data on his phone places Halstenberg on Paul Green Drive, a spot west of the fire. At 7:57 p.m., a traffic camera recorded him heading eastbound on Baseline at Boulder Avenue.
At that point, according to Crocker, Halstenberg had “no other reason to be in Highland that night” than to be taking in the grand spectacle that he had created.
At 8:50 p.m. a traffic camera showed him eastbound on Baseline at Boulder Avenue. At 9:52 p.m. he was caught on camera at Baseline and Church. At 10:38 p.m., according to Crocker, Halstenberg was “still in the area of East Highland Ranch,” unable to bring himself to depart, “feeling the rush” as the dramatic panorama of fire glowing against the dark of the night provided “a sense of accomplishment to someone who has been working on it for a year.”
Between 10:38 p.m. and 10:42 p.m., Crocker said, the arsonist was using his phone to read media and press reports about the fire being reported by the San Bernardino Sun, ABC news, the Sacramento Bee, CBS and the Fresno Bee, along with updates on the fire’s progress posted to and CalFire’s website.
At 10:53 p.m., Halstenberg was driving north on Boulder toward San Manuel Village and at 10:54 he arrived there, which provided a wide perspective on the fiery destruction ongoing in the foothills that was climbing into the San Bernardino Mountains. Then he drove around the parking lot again and again and again and again.
“Why is someone from Norco driving around a parking lot in Highland?” Crocker asked. The prosecutor noted that evacuation orders were being issued and the “only people who are going to stay are those who have personal stake. His personal stake is he starte it [the fire], Crocker said.
It wasn’t until 10:57 that Halstenberg left San Manuel Village and departed Highland entirely at 11:20 p.m. He was unable to drive the truck all the way back to Norco, as it broke down near the boundary between Fontana and Racnho Cucamonga and had to be towed.
Crocker continued his timeline into the wee hours of September 6 after Halstenberg had returned to his residence in Norco, saying that from 1:11 a.m. to 1:12 a.m., he was using his phone to find ways to hide the searches he had carried out on his device.
Over the next several days, Crocker said, Halstenberg deleted the “cookies,” the electronic footprint of several of the internet searches relating to the Line Fire, from his phone.
In his closing argument, Byward maintained the prosecution’s theory as internally inconsistent. He lampooned the prosecution’s characterization of Halstenberg as “a mastermind arsonist” who had “hone his craft” to design “high-end” and “sophisticated” incendiary devices, when what the prosecution described were contraptions containing pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters which fell apart when they were tossed out of a moving vehicle and landed in the street.
“I hope you haven’t been reduced to believing floating lanterns as the cause of the fire,” Byward said.
And what kind of genius firebug would choose a field that was practically “across the street from a fire station” to kindle the fire that was the crowning achievement of his pyromaniacal endeavors, Byward asked.
Byward took aim at the prosecution’s contention that DNA tests of coins found on the Baseline Road – three nickles, a dime and a penny – near the ignition point for the Line Fire and on a cigarette box and paper shop towel found at the scene of several fires near Granite Hill Drive in Jurupa Valley matched Halstenberg. Amid more than a dozen alleged components of the incendiary devices that the prosecution sought to link to Halstenberg to establish he was the arson, all of the others had insufficient DNA material which matched others and excluded Halstenberg or provided an insufficient amount of DNA to match anyone. The three items of evidence the prosecution maintains contained his DNA was tested by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s crime lab, which had that very month – September 2024 – reduced its threshold for declaring a DNA match from the previous 100 centimorgans standard to 30 centimorgans. The items collected at the Granite Hill Fire scene by CalFire investigators had been swabbed for DNA and were intended to be tested at the California Department of Justice’s crime lab, which yet adheres, along with all other crime labs in the country, to the 100 centimorgans standard. The investigators’ and prosecution’s willingness to lower its DNA testing standard to a level it had never previously and which no other crime lab in the country accepts illustrated the degree to which Peppler and Crocker were stretching science to obtain a conviction to confirm the investigators erroneous and premature conclusion that Halstenberg was the firestarter.
Crocker’s timeline contradicted itself, Byward said. Footage from a video camera at the CalFire Fire Station on Baseline Road west of the Line Fire ignition point and the spot roughly 180 feet east where witness Richard Scott spotted and put out a fledgling fire places Halstenberg driving east on Highland at 4:26 p.m., the time Scott testified he saw Halstenberg’s white truck driving west past he was stomping the small fire he had encountered out. Scott’s timing of the incident was documented through the use of geo-positioning data contained on his cellphone.
“You can’t be in more than one place at a time,” Byward intoned.
The prosecution had made much of a large industrial staple found near the ignition point of the Bacon Lane Fire, suggesting it had been used to fasten the paper-wrapped, coin-containing incendiary device his client had allegedly used, Byward reminded the jury. Paralleling that, the prosecution had presented evidence that a toolbox found in a work shed in the backyard of Halstenberg’s residence in Norco was contained dozens or scores of at least three types of industrial staples. But a close inspection of the staples in the toolbox demonstrated they did not match the staple found at the scene of the fire, as to size or form. This, Byward said, was an example of “a trick. I think the prosecution is trying to mislead you.”
Halstenberg’s pickup is not seen, Byward told the jury, in security video footage captured after 4 p.m. on September 5 by a camera mounted at a home located on the west end of the east-west stretch of Bacon Lane which has in its field of view the 90 degree bend of Bacon Lane where it transitions between running east-west to north-south. That footage does show the smoke of the Bacon Fire. As Bacon Lane is the only route to the location of the fire, this is strong evidence Halstenberg was not in the area of the Bacon Lane Fire when it began.
While the Line Fire was yet raging and shortly after the investigation of its origin and cause had begun, the focus had narrowed to Halstenberg, Byward said, and no other explanation, theories or suspects were considered. That singular focus quickly evolved into an effort to frame his client, he said, through the use questionable and falsified evidence as well as unethical and illegal interrogation tactics in which his efforts to obtain legal counsel were denied by the investigators in violation of the law and the U.S. Constitution. The prosecution then joined in with the investigators in perpetuating the narrative of Halstenberg’s guilt, dwelling upon the false statements he had made during the interrogation or his claimed memory loss.
Under those circumstances, Byward said, with the investigators lying themselves and attempting to bluff his client by claiming they had evidence which did not exist, Halstenberg’s reaction was understandable.
“What is it like when the full force of law enforcement is coming down on you?” Byward asked, rhetorically. He then noted that when the defense had turned the table on the investigators during the trial and began asking them about how they had comported themselves, focusing on how they had not ceased their questioning of Halstenberg when he asked for an attorney, they had done exactly what the prosecution was alleging Halstenberg had done, which was to lie. Their lies were more serious transgressions than what Halstenberg had engaged in, as their lying took place took place while they were under oath, in front of Judge Kersey – a former prosecutor – and the jury, thus committing perjury. When they had not lied, Byward said, they took refuge in the same tactic that his client had availed himself of, claiming, ‘I cannot recall. I cannot recall. I cannot recall.”
The prosecution had oversold the idea that there were news reports on his client’s phone regarding the Line Fire on the evening of September 5, Byward said. The Line Fire was breaking news, and with the geopositioning features built into cellphones and the algorithms used in this day and age by cell service providers, those news accounts come to a phone owner automatically, Byward said. Similarly, the prosecution’s insinuation about his phone having been powered off or having lost power in the middle of the day to suggest he was trying to hide his location was a stretch or outright intellectually dishonest, the defense attorney said.
“They want it both ways,” Byward said. “He is a mastermind who turns his phone off his phone to hide his location, and when he turns it back on, he’s still in Highland.” The prosecutors are suggesting that implicates him in lighting the fire, Byward said, but if he had shown up at his home in Norco when his phone came back on, the prosecution would still be suggesting he was the culprit.
“If he flees the scene, [according to the prosecution] it is consciousness of guilt,” Byward said.
What credibility and what validity did the prosecution’s case – one built upon lie after lie, one layer of falsehood atop another – have? Byward asked the jurors. “What are you capable of if you’re willing to lie about something under oath — something really significant?” he asked. “If you’re going to tread on that, what’s next?”
The investigators and the prosecutors, he said, “changed their story. It’s hard to determine the truth.”
That truth, Byward told the jury, is discernible as much or even more though the testing the investigators did not do as the testing they did do.
One investigator after another had testified, Byward said, that there was no need to do physical testing with regard to their theories of how the fire had started and that the materials in Halstenberg’s possession could be fashioned into a functional incendiary device, since they could engage in “cognitive testing” of the device.
The reality was, Byward said, the investigators did do some physical testing when they knew the outcome would match their theories. Still, he said, they engaged in cognitive testing “whenever physical testing would hurt their case. How do you get to the truth of the matter? After all this back and forth about the scientific method… if a hypothesis is tested and doesn’t work out, it has to be discarded.” Throughout the investigation into the Line Fire and his client’s alleged involvement in it, Byward said, there was one example after “another example of not doing anything that might accidentally disprove their hypotheses.”
Byward told the jury, “The very simple thing about this case is that it doesn’t make sense. At the beginning of the trial, I asked you to look at the evidence and trust your common sense.”
He asked the jury, “Are we here for a conviction or are we here to see that justice is done? I hope we are not here to get a conviction. We are here for justice.”
Under the protocol for criminal trials, the prosecution is given the opportunity to make a rebuttal of the defense’s final argument, with the limitation that it is to confine the rebuttal to countering the assertions made in the defense’s final argument only.
After both the prosecution’s and defense’s closing arguments on Monday, May 12, Crocker came roaring back with his rebuttal on Tuesday, May 13.
The defense had suggested that Halstenberg was involved in a series of coincidences and that the coincidences exonerate him, Crocker said.
It was a coincidence that Halstenberg was in Highland all day on September 5, Crocker said. “It was a coincidence he was there for hours and hours,” Crocker said. It was a coincidence that he was in the Bacon Lane neighborhood minutes before the fire started there. It was a coincidence that he drove past Richard Scott shortly after Scott had pulled over to the side of Baseline Road to stomp out a fire, Crocker said. It was a coincidence that just before Acuna, driving eastbound on Baseline Road came up on the nascent Line Fire, she encountered Halstenberg’s truck moving west on Baseline, Crocker said.
“He’s the closest being on planet earth to those fires at the time when we know they broke out,” Crocker said. “Before the fires start, he’s driving around Highland. After the fires start, he stayed in Highland, just driving around with no reason to be there.”
During the day, he had been careful not to linger near the ignition points out of concern that he might be seen, Crocker said, but after the fire had “jumped off, with the cover of night to hide him and the glowing red of the conflagration visibly moving up the hillsides, he remained in Highland, and started reading news accounts about the fire on his cellphone.
“What a coincidence,” Crocker said. Later, Crocker said, he tried to hide his searches for those news stories by deleting them.
Despite his success in setting off what is the fourth largest fire in San Bernardino County history, Halstenberg had been unlucky on September 5 in many ways, Crocker said. His second try to start a massive fire failed when Scott stomped the fire he lit around 4:26 p.m. out, Crocker said. Halstenberg had gotten away with the fires he lit in Riverside County and the first fire he started on Bacon Lane, having properly timed things so that no one was around to see him, Crocker said. But when he set what became the Line Fire, Acuna, driving a Tesla, which is equipped with front, back and side cameras was there to catch him driving away from the scene. He had further bad luck because both Jurupa Valley, where he had used coins in his slightly different incendiary devices, and Highland, both have CalFire as their fire service providers. And CalFire investigators talked to one another, making note of the coins in the devices, leading to the DNA match that implicates Halstenberg, Crocker said. And Halstenberg was unlucky again as a result of the sheriff’s lab changing its DNA centimorgan threshold, which led to Halstenberg’s DNA profile being registered, the prosecutor said. He was unlucky that so many people took notice of his distinctive white Silverado dual cab short bed pickup truck.
“That’s what happens when you start fires in a small community,” Crocker said.
Crocker was sneeringly contemptuous of Byward’s effort to suggest that Scott might have been the arsonist. The attack on Scott was an underhanded, cheap tactic, the prosecutor said. “The defense’s  closing was a wholsesale attack approach,” Crocker said. He [Halstenberg]was foiled by a good Samaritan. If Richard Scott didn’t intervene, that fire would have been out of control.”
The suggestion that it was Scott who started the fire he stomped out was absurd, Crocker said. “Did he start the Line Fire?” Crocker asked. “Did he Start the Bacon Fire?”
Crocker told the jury it should do just as Byward was telling them they should do and use their common sense and look at the mountain of evidence and facts of the case, that Halstenberg was at the scene of where the fires started at the time that they started and that he had in his possession the materials that were used to start the fires. “These aren’t coincidences. When you see all of the evidence in front of you, it is obvious the defendant committed the crimes. He put himself in that seat [i.e., the defendant’s chair].  Now is the time for him to be held accountable for his actions that put him here. Follow the law and find him guilty for the fires he started.”
The five alternate jurors – three men and two women – then separated from the eight men and four women of the jury, who were escorted to the deliberating room around 11 a.m. on Tuesday, May 13.
As of 4 p.m. this afternoon, Friday, May 16, the jury had not returned verdicts on any of the charges.