The compelling circumstantial case against Justin Halstenberg which prosecutors over the previous two weeks had so assiduously constructed in their effort to convince an eight-man four-woman jury that he had deliberately touched off the fourth largest fire in San Bernardino County history this week suffered a shattering setback with the convergence of three equally compelling indications that key items of evidence being presented against him had been planted, altered or substituted.
Ironically, the revelation of the problematic issues undermining the prosecution came during the testimony of Shira Johnson, a crime scene specialist and evidence technician with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department whose testimony was to a considerable degree intended to assure the jury that the sheriff’s department and the other agencies it works with in carrying out investigations abide by strict forensic and preservation standards to ensure the integrity of evidence and the manner in which it is collected and cataloged during the investigative process, utilizing proven and time-tested means of establishing an unbreakable and fully documented chain of custody to prevent evidence from being tampered with, altered or compromised.
During her testimony, Johnson inadvertently illustrated that no matter how conscientious she was in facilitating the straightforward and unbiased processing of evidence entrusted to her, including its preservation and scientific evaluation, she was at the mercy of others, whose conscientiousness, competence and integrity might not match her own.
In the first two weeks of the trial, San Bernardino County deputy district attorney’s Justin Crocker and Andrew Peppler using multiple witnesses and the presentation of more than 90 exhibits sought and essentially succeeded to establish that 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; that two other grass fires had been lit the same day at locations on Bacon Lane and Baseline Road within relatively short distances from where the Line Fire originated at 4:11 p.m. and 4:26 p.m., though they failed to spread; that 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; that fire and arson investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection had examined objects – coins, blue-lined yellow paper, a heavy duty industrial staple – found at the locations where the two fires that preceded the Line Fire on September 5 and the Line Fire originated were components of a makeshift incendiary device used to start those fires; that 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; that there were hundreds of heavy duty industrial staples in a tool chest in a backyard workshop at Halstenberg’s residence in Norco; that 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.; that 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; that 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 suggest was a deliberate attempt by Halstenberg to thwart any investigation into his involvement in starting those fires; security camera video footage of Halstenberg’s truck as it drives 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; details with regard to the investigation into three fires that took place in the Jurupa Valley/Rubidoux area of Riverside County in the summer of 2023, one investigated by California Division of Forestry and Fire Protection arson investigators who were not involved in the Line Fire investigation, which involved incendiary devices fashioned from Marlboro cigarette boxes filled with paper towels and coins.
Crocker and Peppler have hinted that trace DNA found on at least some of those incendiary devices in Riverside County matched Halstenberg, and that evidence will be presented to the jury prior to the prosecution resting its case.
Crocker and Peppler were further purposed to, and did this week on Tuesday, present evidence, consisting of a video/audio recording of Halstenberg’s interrogation on the afternoon of his arrest on September 10 in which he denied, until being confronted with photographic and other evidence to the contrary, that he was in Highland on September 5 and then admitted only that he had gone to the San Manuel Casino and that he had then returned home to Norco and had not driven around Highland. This week, a photograph taken on September 10, 2024 after his pick-up had been impounded, showing what appeared to be a plastic pail in the bed of his pickup truck in which a Marlboro cigarette box had been discarded was shown to the jury.
During his interrogation, when asked by the investigators about the Line Fire, Halstenberg feigned disinterest in it, but said he had heard about it, conflating it with a fire in Lake Elsinore. At that point, during the presentation of the video recording of the interrogation on Tuesday, Crocker suspended the playing of the video to present to the jury evidence extrapolated from Halstenberg’s cellphone that at least 14 times between late in the evening on September 5 and September 9, he had used the Google search engine on his phone to look up media reports from CBS, NBC, ABC, the San Bernardino Sun, the Sacramento Bee, The Fresno Bee, Fox News, Yahoo News and CalFire’s informational page on the Line Fire.
During the first week and most of the second week of testimony and the displaying of evidence, Crocker and Peppler staged for the jury a piecemeal presentation of their case against Halstenberg. Rather than a dry and linear narrative, after laying down the outline of the [case] against the defendant, the prosecutors offered glimpses of the exhibits and witness statements purporting to show the elements of crime. In doings so, other than giving a timeline of those events in Crocker’s opening statement. they moved forward and backward with regard to the events, not bound by a chronological structure in recounting the events of September 5, 2024, instead presenting relevant pieces of the puzzle like scenes from a Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch or Christopher Nolan movie, challenging the jurors to put the order of what occurred together on their own. This show of faith in the intelligence of those assigned to sift through the evidence and determine Halstenberg’s fate served dual purposes. It connected the jurors as co-equals with the prosecution in the district attorney’s office’s declared mission of rendering “equal justice for all,” while challenging them to engage in following the intricate and interlocking elements of the case to reach a conclusion indistinguishable from their own: that Halstenberg is an arsonist who is responsible for the Line Fire.
That slightly disjointed but nevertheless intriguing retelling of events depicted Halstenberg as a firebug with a history of using crude but effective ignition devices he fashions from easily available items that feature paper and coins used as ballast which he lights and throws from his moving vehicle onto parched vegetation near the side of the road in an effort to spark a grass fire that will grow into an inferno. Evidence offered to the jury included the incendiary device model used by Halstenberg in 2023, consisting of a cigarette box stuffed with coins, atop which would be a heavy duty paper towel, and what arson investigators and prosecutors contend he had gravitated toward using in 2024, entailing writing tablet paper wrapped around coins and secured with large industrial staples in the middle and twists of the paper at either end. Other evidence and testimony placed the defendant in Highland at just after noon on September 5, 2024, followed by hour-and-a-half during which he was engaged at the San Manuel Indian Tribe’s Yaamava’ Casino. Thereafter, tracking of his cellphone and occasional traffic monitoring videos show he remained in Highland until at 3:26 p.m he either deliberately shut his phone off or it lost power. Video and photographic evidence, however, indicated he did not leave Highland until sometime around 11 p.m. that night. Further evidence and testimony presented by Crocker and Peppler strongly suggest that in the late afternoon Halstenberg started not just a single fire that made its way from Highland in a path upward and eastward into and across the San Bernardino Mountains forestland, but three fires. The first two of those, in the midst of maintained and regularly irrigated ornamental plants did not take and burned itself out before spreading and was thoroughly doused by responding firefighters. The second was almost immediately spotted by a good Samaritan passing by who acted quickly to stomp it out. Halstenberg’s third Promethean effort, according to the prosecution, spread and then made its way to the slopes of the nearby foothills where it grew beyond the ability of firefighters to contain it and over the next month-and-half consumed 43,996 acres, entailing costs calculated at $114 million. Crocker and Peppler presented cellphone data and further video evidence to show that after the Line Fire was raging, Halstenberg reactivated his phone at 6:44 p.m. and used it to read media accounts of the conflagration that was under way while he drove to various locations around the City of Highland that offered a panoramic view of fire so he could admire his handiwork.
Crucial evidence prosecutors maintain implicates Halstenberg and which was presented to the jury in the form of photos or video stills included coins found at or very near the point of ignition of the three fires in Highland on September 5, 2024; blue-lined yellow paper found at or around those three ignition points; an industrial staple found along with two razor blades found near the ignition point of the first known fire in Highland on September 5, 2024, the one that began at or around: 4:11 p.m.; at least three singed or burnt Marlboro cigarette boxes found near the ignition points of a series of fires, including one on June 27, July 1 and July 9, 2023 along the north side of Granite Hill Drive between Quartz Canyon Road and Pyrite Street in Jurupa Valley in Riverside County; blue shop paper towels found in or near those cigarette boxes; and coins found in or near those cigarette boxes.
By late last week, the prosecution team de-intensified its emphasis on evidence establishing, and testimony explicating, Halstenberg’s guilt, which was what it had initially exclusively focused upon, and began to pepper into its presentation evidence and witnesses intended to show the extent of the destruction as well as the financial cost and both the social and individual human loss, pain and suffering the defendant had inflicted on the community and people.
Testimony this week began on Monday with Jason Fairfax, a CalFire captain/investigator who had been the last witness to testify last week. The cross examination and redirect examination of Fairfax had not been completed so he returned to the witness stand this week. He had been called in to investigate the origin of the fire that had occurred in Jurupa Valley on June 27, 2023.
Fairfax previously testified he had found on the west side of the field along Granite Hill Drive closest to Quartz Canyon Road a Marlboro Gold cigarette box with a large, rusted hex nut in it, a blue paper shop towel and a blue rubber band near one another in the field where the June 27 fire had occurred. He opined it to be an incendiary device. He had also found further to the east a partially burned blue paper shop towel and, separately further east still, a partially burned Marlboro Gold box with a blue paper shop towel and one coin which together he said he believed was an incendiary device used in an attempt to start a fire prior to June 27. Further east he found a blue paper shop towel that was unburned. Further to the east, he found another blue paper shop towel that was partially burned and was wrapped around rolled up coins and secured with a rubber band, but which otherwise remained essentially intact, having not been consumed with fire when it apparently failed to stay lit and burn entirely. Fairfax identified it as an incendiary device, as well. He had also found another partially Marlboro box on the ground next to two dimes.
He said the items he found had been picked up using latex gloves and placed into paper bags which were sealed and delivered to the California Department of Justice crime lab in Riverside for processing.
The photos of the items Fairfax collected showed them to be Marlboro Gold boxes or Marlboro Blend No 27 boxes, both of which are gold in color.
Fairfax testified he did not believe it necessary to carry out tests or experiments to see if the items he had found would actually function as incendiary devices, as he could “rely on life experience” to “cognitively” determine that “a [paper] towel inside a cigarette box, when it gets in contact with a flame, will burn. If you combine that with coins and a rubber band, you can throw it.”
Testifying after Fairfax were Jonathan Schilling an emergency medicine physician Saint Bernardine Medical Center who had treated CalFire Fireman Jose Hernandez, who had been injured while fighting the Line Fire in the San Bernardino Mountain Community of Running Springs on September 8. Schilling confirmed that Hernandez had suffered an avulsion fracture, in which the one of his ligaments tore a bone fragment free of his ankle.
The prosecution then called Carl Behrens, a financial analyst for the federal government, who from his office in Albuquerque, New Mexico had tallied the federal government’s expenses in responding to the Line Fire.
According to Behrens, the U.S. Government expended a total of $62,670,633.76, including $12.4 million on personnel, primarily firefighters; $9.9 million for aviation activity; $28.1 million various contracts; $2.8 million on fire retardant; $$35,000 on supplies and $929,000 on travel.
Lori Bartosch, a Running Springs resident, testified that her home at 25 Panorama Road suffered fire damage to its deck and the support beams and structure beneath the deck, which cost her $12,000 to repair.
Next brought in to briefly testify was Ariel Sosa, a fire captain with CalFire who on July 9, 2023 went to where a fire had broken out in the scrub-covered expanse north of Granite Hill Drive between Pedley Road to the east and Quartz Canyon road to the west in Jurupa Valley in Riverside County to assist Captain John May in his investigation aimed at determining the origin of the fire.
Sosa said that around 2:30 in the afternoon he was working in a different part of the open land than May, scouring for indicators of what had caused the fire, which he said had by that point been brought under control, with “mop up” progressing as hot spots were being doused with water to prevent any chance of further flare-ups.
May had informed him, Sosa said, that “there were fires in that area on recent days.” Sosa said, “It was apparent there were burn scars of previous fires” at various locations throughout the field.
He said that at a spot that was “approximately 500 feet” from the fire that had occurred that day, he located a cigarette box, the top of which was burned with what appeared to be a rag cloth or paper towel in it. Sosa said he summoned May and the item was photographed in place and then collected as evidence for scientific processing. A photo of the cigarette of the box showed it contained “Blend No. 27” Marlboros.
After Sosa was excused as a witness, May, another fire captain with CalFire who is also a sworn law enforcement officer and whose primary function is that of an arson investigator, was called to testify.
On July 9, he said, he arrived at the scene of the still active fire around 1:40 p.m. and shortly after it was knocked down he began walking around the scene of the fire looking for he called “macro indicators” of the fire’s cause. He had ascertained that the ignition area for that day’s fire to be an area of roughly five feet by five feet when at some point. He concluded, on the basis of what he had surveyed that there had been a “hot start” to the fire, meaning a direct flame, perhaps from a lighter or a match, and that the fire had been deliberately lit. Shortly thereafter, he said, he said, he was called to a point further east by Sosa.
There, May confirmed in his testimony, he was shown the cigarette pack that Sosa had found. May said, “It appeared it had been used as a device to start a fire.” He said the fire it had created confined itself or was limited to an area of about “ten feet by ten feet.” He said that in estimating when that fire occurred, I would say maybe two or three days prior.”
May said he photographed the cigarette box on the ground, where it had been found by Sosa and then collected it, using gloves and placing it into a bag, so it could be scientifically processed.
Sheriff’s Crime Scene specialist Shira Johnson was next called to the witness stand.
Johnson testified with regard to the methods of collection and the strict protocol that she adheres to in ensuring that no contamination or disturbance of the evidence can take place, that items of evidentiary value are photographed thoroughly where they are found in the field and then handled with gloves when they are placed in appropriate containers to protect and preserve them. The containers, which are generally paper bags when there is the potential for mold accumulation or in plastic bags when mold is not an issue, she said, are sealed and provided with labels and other identifying markers, including bar codes, whereupon it is placed into storage under secure conditions to ensure the chain of custody is memorialized and ensured, with corresponding digital images of the items uploaded to a cloud-based system. She said the nomenclature under which the evidence was logged reflected what agency the evidence originated with, as in this case both the sheriff’s department and CalFire.
Johnson’s involvement in the Halstenberg case extended to the processing or pre-processing to the processing of Halstenberg’s truck and the processing or pre-processing of evidence that was collected by investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Johnson related how she carried out the processing of Halstenberg’s truck on September 10, 2024, after it had been transported from Norco, near Halstenberg’s residence at the time of his arrest earlier that during a traffic stop. The truck had initially been transported to the Highland Sheriff’s Station and was then brought to the sheriff’s crime lab in San Bernardino, where she carried out the photographing, examination, collection and logging of items within it and the gathering of latent fingerprints and DNA evidence from inside and outside of the truck. Items photographed and collected from within the front cab of the vehicle included a single sheet of blue-lined yellow paper on the front floorboard and multiple coins on the center console. In the backseat of the truck, Johnson photographed and gathered to be put into evidence a pad of blue-lined yellow paper which had multiple pages ripped out, Gatorade bottles, blue shop paper towels, a screwdriver, a pair of binoculars that were on one of the back seats and a pair of blue Dickey pants with what appeared to be small burn hole on the lower portion of one of the legs.
In the bed of the pickup were two buckets and a tarp. In one of the pails, Johnson located, photographed and gathered a Marlboro Red cigarette box.
Johnson testified that she collected or lifted latent fingerprints from certain spots on the inside and outside of the vehicle and had subjected the sheet of blue-lined paper to a fingerprint illuminating chemical. She testified that she had swabbed all of the door handles, the steering wheel, the gear shift, the radio and air conditioning control knobs on the dashboard as well as coins in a cup-holder on the driver’s side of the center console in an effort to collect DNA.
Johnson testified the sheriff’s lab did not have the capacity to test the composition of the paper found in Halstenberg’s truck or at or near the scene of the Bacon and Line fires.
Johnson further testified that on September 10, 2024 she did processing or preprocessing of evidence booked by CalFire investigators. That evidence including items gathered in Highland near the scene of three fires that began on September 5, 2024, including two which were put out before spreading and the third, which grew into the Line Fire, the fourth largest fire in recorded San Bernardino County history. On those items, Johnson said, she was told there was a “rush priority” with regard to their examination. The items included, she said, a construction staple, two razor blades, two collections of coins packaged together, two very small pieces of irregularly shaped blue-lined yellow notepad paper burned around the edges. Johnson testified she attempted to pull latent fingerprints from the items, with the exception of the construction staple, which was too small to provide any results. She did, however, swab the staple for DNA, as she did with all of the other items.
Johnson said she wet swabbed – using purified water – the items and dry swabbed them as well in an effort to collect as much DNA as possible.
She changed gloves every time she was processing items from different packages. When multiple items were contained in a package, she collectively swabbed them, she said. This extended to collectively swabbing two coins – one quarter and one nickel – that were packaged together and collectively swabbing five coins – three nickels, one dime and a penny – that were packaged together, she said.
Johnson testified that on October 28, 2024, she was assigned to process some items sent over by CalFire investigators in Riverside County relating to fires that had occurred in Jurupa Valley in the summer of 2023. Those included a partially burned red and white Marlboro box with a quarter and a nickel and a blue paper towel in it.
The box was treated with a chemical to highlight latent fingerprints and was tested for DNA. Johnson testified that the chemical used to make the fingerprints more prominent would not denature DNA. She separately swabbed the blue paper towel for DNA, she said. She used powder on the quarter to highlight possible fingerprints on it, she said, and she swabbed the quarter and nickel for DNA as well.
She swabbed a second blue paper towel for DNA, she said. She was also supplied with eight pennies that were stuck together and what she called a screw. She was unable to separate the pennies from one another, and she did not process them for fingerprints. She swabbed them and the screw for DNA. She was provided with two dimes from the Riverside County fire scene, as well, and she swabbed those for DNA.
There was an undercurrent of bafflement within the courtroom during portions of Johnson’s testimony with regard to the package of five coins that she had processed on September 10 and the red and white Marlboro box provided to her on October 28.
Previously, during the first week of testimony, Fire Captain Michael Franklin told the jury about arriving at the scene of the Line Fire while it was still a relatively small fire confined to a few acres off the side of the road, moving at a moderate rate of speed, while firefighters were yet trying to encircle it with a hose line to control it, prior to it reaching a bordering slope at which point it raced upwards and became a raging inferno. Franklin testified he saw, and a still photo taken from his body camera as he was walking toward a fire engine depicted, four coins lying on or near the fog line running along the periphery of Baseline Avenue next to the fire’s point of original ignition. Variously referred to as “coins” and as “pennies,” based upon the video still, they appeared to be four pennies. Those coins were distinct from a quarter and a nickel found near the point of origin of a fire that broke out earlier that afternoon, at 4:11 p.m. just east of Bacon Lane, roughly a mile from where the Line Fire started.
Johnson’s description of not four pennies but rather three nickels, one dime and a penny was incongruous with the previously presented evidence and testimony.
Similarly, the red and white Marlboro box that she testified she was presented with on October 28 was inconsistent with all of the photographic depictions of the Marlboro boxes found at the various fire scenes along the stretch of Granite Hill Road in Jurupa Valley, which were Marlboro Gold or Marlboro Blend No. 27 boxes, which are gold and white as opposed to red and white. Intensifying the confusion was Johnson’s testimony, augmented with a photo, about a Marlboro Red cigarette box she found in a pail in the bed of Halstenberg’s truck on September 10.
The issues with regard to the coin number/denomination and Marlboro box color discrepancies produced only a minor stir in the courtroom in comparison with what followed later on Monday afternoon.
Deputy District Attorney Crocker had ended his direct examination and of Johnson and Deputy Public Defender Byward had begun his cross examination, during which he had displayed on the courtroom’s overhead viewing monitors Exhibit 42, a photograph of the scraps of yellow blue-line ruled paper found at the scene of the fire that had begun at approximately 4:11 p.m. on September 5 just east of Bacon Lane. While in some photographs of the irregularly shaped piece of paper it appeared to be the remnants of a larger sheet of paper that had been reduced by fire on four sides to what was an unevenly square or rectangle roughly one-and-three quarters inches by one-and-a-half inches, in others taken from a different angle it appeared to be two nearly identically-shaped pieces of paper, one on top of the other so that they were nearly indistinguishable.
It is the theory of the arson investigators and therefore an intrinsic element of the prosecution’s case against Halstenberg that the incendiary devices that he had used during his arson spree in Highland on September 5 consisted of coins wrapped in blue-lined yellow tablet paper in some fashion fastened and twisted at each end, which were ignited and then tossed from his truck onto the parched vegetation along the side of the roads along various routes through Highland that he traveled that day. he traveled at the side of the road. Two evidence items of importance to the prosecution are a notepad of the blue-lined yellow paper found in the rear portion of the cab of Halstenberg’s truck and what appeared to be a sheet of paper torn from that notepad that was found on the floorboard on the driver’s side of the front portion of the truck’s cab. All previously displayed photos of the blue-lined tablet paper throughout the trial showed the horizontal blue lines on that yellow paper as singular, creating rules that that had a height of 0.34375 of an inch or 8.73125 millimeters. As Byward’s colleague, Deputy Public Defender Justin Ewaniszyk, zoomed the display in on the paper and tightened the focus, what was apparent on the viewing screens was that the paper found at the scene of what arson investigators said was the point of origin of the Bacon Fire, featured double blue lines spaced roughly one millimeter apart, with the top line of each ruling roughly 7.7 millimeters from the bottom line of the ruling above it.
This discrepancy was so glaring that when Judge Kersey saw it, she flinched, after which a pallor settled over her face. Gradually, the more natural hue of her visage returned, but as Byward’s pointed questioning of Johnson with regard to the paper and its apparent and clearly definable difference with the component that is central to the incendiary devices Halstenberg stands accused of having used to set the Line Fire, her face became more and more florid. Abruptly, she terminated that day’s proceedings, excusing the jury until the following morning.
Outside the presence of the jury, the implication of what had just occurred was a subject of discussion among the judge and attorneys, with Judge Kersey acknowledging that the defense had “poked a hole” in the prosecution’s case, and Crocker stating he wanted at the earliest opportunity to revisit the issues surrounding that particular evidence.
The following morning, Johnson returned to the witness stand, and Byward went over in depth much of what had previously been covered with regard to the exhibits referenced in Johnson’s testimony the previous day. Upon Byward ending his questioning, an anxious Crocker sought to engage with Johnson with regard to the small pieces of blue-line ruled paper that had been at the center of the prosecution’s evidentiary misadventure the previous day.
Crocker had his colleague, Deputy District Attorney Andrew Peppler, display for the jury Exhibit 42, the photograph of the paper taken of the remnants of what arson investigators say was the incendiary device that had set off the short-lived Bacon Fire, which was under a mile as the crow flies from where the Line Fire was initiated later on September 5, 2024. That photo was taken at or near the point fire investigators say was where the Bacon Fire began. The photo’s visual field encompassed a quarter lying on the ground next to the burned-edged paper scraps so closely stuck together that they appeared to be a single scrap of paper, and an industrial staple. Referring to the paper scrap[s] as not being much bigger than the quarter lying next to it, Crocker, noting that the ground was likely damp because the photo had been taken in the aftermath of the mop-up effort by arriving firefighters who doused the area with water to prevent any chance the fire would reignite on a day where thermometers in Highland showed the temperature reached a high of 108, 109 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit, asked if the paper appeared to be wet.
Johnson testified that the paper did not appear wet to her.
When Crocker sought to suggest that the paper was indeed damp, Johnson contradicted him by indicating the paper would have a darker shade if it were wet.
Crocker persisted, suggesting that the paper being soaked with water would impact its transparency, explicating how it was that the lines on the backside of the paper, at a slightly varied horizontal position from those on the front, were visibly showing through the paper, giving the visual impression that the rulings on paper were separated by double lines.
“I could not tell you about that one,” Johnson responded.
Upon Johnson being excused as a witness, the prosecution deviated from the schedule of witnesses it had previously lined up to seek to redress the blow it had sustained with Byward’s focus the day before on the paper found at the scene of the Bacon Fire. Recalled to the witness stand was CalFire Battalion Chief Matt Kirkhart, who oversaw the team of investigators seeking to determine the cause of the Line Fire and ascertain who was responsible once they reached the conclusion that it had been started by an arsonist.
Kirkhart acknowledged that the photo taken in the field at the scene of the Bacon Fire appeared to show a scrap of yellow paper with rulings that were divided by double blue lines. Kirkhart said that three days later a “washed out” photo of the same scrap of yellow paper taken in the setting of the sheriff’s crime lab showed rulings that used single blue lines as dividers. In that photo, Kirkhart said, what appeared in a casual glance to be a single piece of paper could actually be discerned as two pieces of paper pressed together.
Kirkhart’s testimony was that on September 5, when the photo of the paper scraps was taken, the top scrap appeared to have double blue lines. Kirkhart said that the ground at the scene of the Bacon Fire in the middle-late afternoon of September “was wet from fire suppression efforts” and this hypothesis was that “While it [the paper] was wet the second line [on the reverse side] was actually showing though to the front.”
Kirkhart said that in at least one of the photos taken of the yellow blue lined paper, when the photo was brightened he “could see a phantom of the line on the backside.”
Kirkhart testified that he had that morning gone to the sheriff’s crime lab/scientific investigations division and retrieved the two scraps of paper in question, whereupon, under controlled circumstances he attempted to replicate the appearance of double-lined rulings on the paper. According to Kirkhart, the scraps, which he said measured roughly one-and-a-half inches by one-and-a-quarter inches, were laid out on butcher paper and subjected to different lighting conditions. One of those efforts involved using a flashlight as a backlight to see if the lines showed up. That did not work, he said. Taking another shot at it, using a cellphone light washed everything out. Upon angling a “magnifying glass with an LED strip around the rim” at the paper, Kirkhart said, he was able to capture an image showing both lines.
A photograph of the paper Kirkhart took that morning under those conditions was projected on the courtroom’s viewing monitors. When the image was zoomed in on, the second blue line was clearly visible.
In his cross examination of Kirkhart, Byward wrung from the battalion chief that on September 5, the paper was lying on the ground without any magnified or intensified lighting when it was photographed. Byward also sought to cast doubt on whether the paper, even if had been wet and translucent would have remained so for very long. He inquired of Kirkhart how he knew that the area was soaked.
“How do you now it hadn’t dried yet?” Byward asked.
Kirkhart indicated that he and Fire Captain Williams, who had come to the scene of the Bacon Fire to see if they could find a cause of the fire were down either bent down or on their hands and knees looking for clues.
“We stuck our fingers in the dirt, and it wasn’t dry yet,” Kirkhart responded.
How long does it take paper to dry in 100 degree heat?” Byward asked.
Kirkhart said he did not know.
Thereafter, outside the presence of the jury, there ensued before Judge Kersey legal sparring between the defense and prosecution over exhibits that the prosecution would be able to present during the testimony of the next witness, Detective Jacob Hernandez, the lead investigator for the sheriff’s department with regard to the Line Fire arson.
It was the defense’s contention that the investigators had made multiple violations of Halstenberg’s Fifth Amendment rights to counsel before and during questioning, and that the proof of those violations are contained on the various videotapes of his interrogations by investigators and during his other contacts with law enforcement officers. It was therefore bordering on the absurd, the defense asserted, to allow the interrogation videos to come in as evidence.
Furthermore, the defense objected to the prosecution’s intended presentation of data extracted from Halstenberg’s cellphone showing that the phone had accessed or otherwise received multiple media and California Division of Forestry reports with regard to the Line Fire and that there were other social media or email contacts or references to or with websites that were also linked to his computer’s browser which offered videos of fires, in particular fire department websites or ones dedicated to publicizing fire departments that featured videos of firefighters responding to large and devastating conflagrations. It was Byward and Ewaniszyk’s contention that the websites or news reports/news flashes the prosecution was citing were but a small percentage of the thousands of sites or applications accessed by his phone. Moreover, they argued, geo-location applications on cellphones and the current aggressive use of algorithms by companies and entities tied in with internet and cellular service and internet search engine providers results in advertisement-driven news, entertainment and informational media being “pushed” upon users of the internet and cellphone customers. All of this, in combination with Halstenberg’s presence in Highland on the day of the Line Fire could have resulted in the links to television station, print media and web service company reports relating to the Line Fire being on his phone. His phone’s accessing of the Calfire updates on the Line Fire might have proceeded, Byward and Ewaniszyk suggested, from links in the news articles to the Calfire website.
“It is pushed to you, the phone, depending on where you are,” said Byward. “If I subscribe to Youtube and watch a video on fishing, it is going to give me five other fishing videos.”
With regard to the videos of fires, Byward said, “We don’t know he watched them.” He said the prosecution’s purpose was to “show an overall fascination” with fire. “ It is improper character evidence.”
The prosecution’s response to the defense’s protests about the violation of Halstenberg’s Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination was that Halstenberg made no confession nor admission with regard to starting any of the three fires that occurred on September 5m so that no such violation could be alleged to have occurred, and that the probative value of the videos of the interrogations were to demonstrate that Halstenberg was dishonest in his representations to the investigators.
The actual absurdity would be, Crocker asserted, if the prosecution “can’t show evidence that he lied to law enforcement.”
Case law holds that evidence relating to such interrogations allows jurors to consider them when the defendant, Crocker said, engages in “so many lies or untruths” that it illustrates the defendamt’s character. The video’s audio would illustrate that Halstenberg was not being truthful when he asserted, Crocker said, “Essentially, I’m not into fire. I’m not interest in fire: ‘I didn’t start no fire… I’m not infatuated by it… I don’t want to start a fire… I have no reason to do that…’” when those statements are contrasted with his interests in viewing YouTube videos related to fires.
“You have to actively choose to subscribe to those channels,” Crocker said.
In addition, Crocker said, the media coverage of the Line Fire which was accessed on Halstenberg’s phone, contradicted his assertion during the interrogation that “I don’t know anything about this fire.”
With regard to allowing the jury to know what data and information was accessed through Halstenberg’s phone, Judge Kersey, while saying she welcomed being educated as to the “pushing” phenomenon that is inherent in the use and possession of a smart communication device currently, nonetheless ruled that the prosecution could provide the jury with exhibits relating to Halstenberg’s phone having accessed those media sites, websites or videos, with the exception of one such video pertaining to fires in San Bernardino County, which the judge said would be “prejudicial” to the defendant.

Byward and Ewaniszyk emphasized that they were wary of the prosecution presenting an edited version of the interrogation transcripts in which the jury would be provided with and statements, information and implications in the way the questions were asked that were damaging or which appeared damaging to their client while expurgating the context and conditions under which the questioning took place, obscuring the interrogative technique that was employed against Halstenberg, which included isolation, selective presentation of the evidence the investigators had to that point accumulated, multiple misrepresentations, gaslighting which extended to the interrogators claiming to have evidence which they did not, in fact, possess or which did not exist, Halstenberg’s consistent and never-compromised denials of having started the fires, and the interrogators’ violation of his Fifth Amendment rights when they continued and intensified their questioning of him when he requested an attorney.
“We would rather the entire video [of the interrogation] be excluded, but if it is to come in [to evidence], we want the entire video played,” Byward said at one point.
Ultimately, Byward and Ewaniszyk acceded to the video being displayed to the jury during the testimony of the sheriff’s department’s lead investigator on the case, Detective Jacob Hernandez, on the condition that the entire video was shown to the jury. This was preceded by Judge Kersey, from the bench and while the jurors were still absent from the courtroom, questioning Halstenberg, seated at the defense table, as to whether he understood that the video in question contained his request for an attorney, which the jurors would hear, and whether he waived the right to keep that revelation from the jurors. Halstenberg, acknowledging that he had discussed the matter with his attorneys, waived that right.
After the jury returned to the courtroom, Detective Hernandez was called to the witness stand.
Hernandez testified that he works out of the sheriff’s department’s Highland station and was assigned on September 6 to serve as the department’s lead detective to assist thc CalFire investigators with regard to the Line Fire.
Hernandez testified to his use of the law enforcement resources available to him, including state driver license data bases and the Vigilant license plate reader system employed by the sheriff’s department in Highland, to establish that Halstenberg was in Highland on September 5, 2024. The Vigilant reader placed Halstenberg at various locations in Highland, including on Boulder Avenue that evening and on Mountain Avenue near its intersection with Clifton Street north of Baseline Road at 10:53 p.m.; at the Baseline and Church Street intersection at 8:52 p.m. heading toward Weaver Avenue; was at the intersection of Baseline Road and Boulder Street just west of Church Street 8:50 p.m.; at the corner of Baseline and Boulder, eastbound toward the origin of the fire at 7:57 p.m.
Hernandez testified that he was successful in searching through the department’s database which included the digitized Vigilant system recordings to find “hits” with regard to Halstenberg’s vehicle.
Hernandez testified that sheriff’s department and CalFire personnel had been carrying out surveillance of Halstenberg’s home. He said that he was present in Norco on the morning of September 10, when those monitoring the Halstenberg residence spotted him leaving between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., and a traffic stop was effectuated a few blocks later, and that he assisted in taking Halstenberg into custody. Snippets of the video of Halstenberg’s arrest, taken from Hernandez’s bodyworn camera, which bore the time/date stamp of 9:25:55   9-10 as it began ,were played for the jury.
The jury was also shown a photo of a cell phone connected to a charger on what looked to be a bed inside the Halstenberg home, which Hernandez indicated he had seized during the serving of a search warrant on those premises.
Hernandez testified that the phone was turned over to the department’s scientific investigations division, referred to him as “our hi tech division, which used Cellbright software to search for the contents of the cellphone, download that data and interpret it. He also put together a search warrant served upon T-Mobile, Halstenberg’s cellphone service provider, for cellphone records relating to that phone. Ultimately, Hernandez said, the department obtained a complete profile of what was contained on the phone, including its call and texting history, photos, website search history and any contents that had been deleted which remained in the phone’s digital cache. All of that material which came from the Cellbright analysis and from T-Mobile, was provided to the department’s cellphone technical specialist, Paul Bugar. Hernandez said. Hernandez said he did not alter what he had received before providing it to Bugar.
Hernandez did say, however, that he had looked through the phone and came across a gmail account, halstenbergj@gmail.com, for which he also prepared a search warrant request to Google.
Hernandez testified that he also examined video obtained from the San Manuel Tribe’s Yaamava’ casino of activity there on September 5, both inside and outside the casino itself.
There was previous testimony that Halstenberg was at the casino or on its grounds from 12:04 p.m. until 1:34 p.m. on September 5.
Hernandez said he looked at the available footage that documented Halstenberg’s presence there but that in looking at the videos, he “did not see him go out on the main casino floor.”
According to Hernandez, after Halstenberg was arrested during the traffic stop in Norco, he was taken to the Highland sheriff’s station, placed in and interview room.
Deputy District Attorney Crocker, who handled the direct examination of Hernandez, asked Hernandez, avoiding the use of the term “interrogation,” if he had carried out an “interview” of the defendant and if he had used his bodyworn camera to record it. Hernandez, who indicated that the exchange with Halstenberg, which also involved Kirkhart, as the chief investigator with CalFire, was recorded by Kirkhart’s bodyworn camera.
The video of the interrogation was played for the jury. Hernandez, a grizzled 20-year veteran of the sheriff’s department, assumed the lead in questioning Halstenberg, though Kirkhart at varying junctures was a key participant in the effort to wring from the supect a confession that he had set three fires in Highland that day. At 6-foot 5 inches tall, with an athletic build and covered in tattoos across his neck and arms, Hernandez comes across in the video as an imposing and hulking, indeed intimidating figure, akin to a cross between a police detective and a motorcycle gang enforcer. This effect was all the more pronounced, given that Halstenberg is handcuffed with his hands in front of him and is seated at a table such that he is not being faced directly by his interrogators, who are seated at angles to him, and are clearly in command of the situation and the tone and tenor of the inquiry.
As part of their strategy in attempting to break Halstenberg, Hernandez and Kirkhart used multiple approaches, primarily relying on the
Reid technique,a structured interrogation process by which the investigator attempts to establish a rapport with the suspect by engaging in what is at first friendly conversation and banter, establishing ind doing so how quickly the subject responds and what mannerisms he evinces when reacting to what his interlocutor says or when truthfully responding to questions. Eventually, the Reid technique involves those conducting the interrogation to become accusatory, and not just passivvely accusatory, but aggressively accusatory, aommandeering the verbal interation in such a way that the suspect is not allowed to assert his innocence but is pressed into accepting questions that are structured in such a way as to imply guilt no matter how those questions are answered, such that the subject’s continuing participation in the conversation approaches being an admission of guilt. The interrogators make reference to actual evidence or evidence that does not actually exist, doing so in a way that the investigator conveys to the suspect that the results of the investigation clearly indicate that the suspect commited the crime in question. In this way, the interrogation for long stretches resembles a monologue by the investigator rather than questioning. Upon the investigator ceasing in making the assertions, what is calculated to seem to be an awkward silence ensues during which the subject feels it necessary to interject a response, which is drowned out immediately by the interrogator if the response does not contain either the sought-after admission or an indication that the responder has accepted the interrogator’s assertions as fincontrovertible. The Reid technique involves psychological dominance, isolation and situational humiliation of the subject, such as having him handcuffed, and instilling anxiety and fear into the atmosphere when the suspect is confronted with accusations of guilt and questions loaded to provoke an acknowledgement of guilt. An intrinsic element of the Reid is to make the interrogation a singularly uncomfortable and unpleasnt experience while leading the suspect to perceive confession as the only prospect for terminating the interview.
Other techniques brought to bear during the interrogation of Halstenberg extended to inundating him with leading questions, which were designed to forced him into giving specific answers; kinesic observational inquiries by which the officers bombarded him with multiple questions to take not of his reaction, particularly nervousness, and body language as well as providing outright falsehoods while responding; employing a cognitive interviewing approach in which Hernandez and Kirkhart inquired about the circumstances on September 5 seemingly unrelated to the fire to provoke him into a statement or statements that could be used to implicate him; suggesting that they – Hernandez and Kirkhart – would be in a position to assist him if he would simply make a clean breast of it and confess; and minimization, in which it was suggested that the act of arson they were insisting Halstenberg had engaged in was perhaps an accident or an understandable lapse given his situation and not all that serious.
The interrogations of Halstenberg that were played for the jurors were divided into four distinct parts. The first was the longest, lasting for more than an hour. The second was a less formal effort by Hernandez and Kirkhart to get Halstenberg to implicate himself, a recording of the three of them talking outside the building during a cigarette break. During both of those, Hernandez and Kirkhart stopped short of, and specifically resisted, explaining what the nature of the crime they were investigating was. This was done with the hope or belief that Halstenberg himself would bring up the subject of the Line Fire, which would be evidence, arguably, of consciousness of guilt. That ploy, however, did not work, as Halstenberg, on his own, did not bring up the subject of the Line Fire. The third portion of the interrogation was the continuation of Hernandez’s and Kirkhart’s first engagement with Halstenberg in the interview room, during which the interrogators dispensed with avoiding mention of the Line Fire and disclosed to Halstenberg that they had looked into the origin of the fire, had concluded it was arson and were armed with clear and convincing evidence that he had started it. The fourth interrogation or the fourth leg of the September 10 interrogation in Highland consisted of Detective Lorraine Bertetto, who also worked at the Highland sheriff’s station, coming into the interrogation room after Hernandez and Kirkhart had stepped out to take a DNA sample by swabbing the still-handcuffed Halstenberg’s cheek. During that encounter with the suspect, Bertetto sought, as had Hernandez and Kirkhart earlier, to establish a rapport with Halstenberg by expressing concern and sympathy about his dying mother, and then trying to suss out from him a statement relating to the Line Fire and his involvement with it, all the while with her bodyworn video camera recording their interaction.
The interrogation video was played for the jurors, who were provided with a written transcription of the exchanges as a courtesy while the video was playing.
The interrogation began with Hernandez reciting the Miranda warning to Halstenberg. When Halstenberg did not immediately request an attorney, Hernandez, presuming that to be a waiver of the suspect’s Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, immediately set to questioning Halstenberg, initially sounding sympathetic, asking about his mother, to which Halstenberg states that his mother has terminal cancer. Hernandez sought to capitalize on that by stating that he had gone through the same [experience, trial, difficulty, circumstance] when his mother had cancer.
In a low key manner, Hernandez sought to get from Halstenberg where he was on September 5.
“I can’t remember,” Halstenberg said.
When Hernandez confronted him with an assertion that he had been at the Casino, Halstenberg acknowledged he had been there.
“I went to San Manuel for a couple of hours,” he said, placing himself there at “nine in the morning or ten” in response to Hernandez’s inquiry as to when he was there. To Hernandez’s further questioning as to how long he was there, he recalled, accurately, that he had been there “an hour-and-a-half,” saying he had “lost $60 on the $2 slots [slot machines].”
To Hernandez’s questioning about where else he had gone and what else he had done that day, Halstenberg responded, “Nowhere… Nothing comes to mind… Nothing stands out.”
To a multitude of generic questions, he acknowledged that he drove a white Silverado truck, which he suggested was his father’s or that his father favored Silverado pickups, that he did not drive it too much, that he didn’t “want to drive it too much,” that if he was driving around Highland, “I don’t know why” and that he didn’t “have anywhere to go, that he didn’t “have any hobbies” and that most of the time “I just stay home” and that in the course of working as a deliverer for Fed Ex he did a lot of traveling – “15 states in the last eight months.”
When Hernandez pressed him on what he had done the rest of the day on September 5, Halstenberg said that after leaving the Casino he got on the freeway and “I just went home and worked in the backyard, mowed the lawn.”
Halstenberg quibbled with Hernandez’s suggestion that he had remained in Highland after leaving the casino, saying that Highland is “not the best area.”
At that point, Hernandez began to shift away from the heretofore relatively friendly tone of the questioning to something a bit more confrontational, suggesting that Halstenberg was not being truthful when he asked, “Why was your truck driving in the city [i.e., Highland]?”
This provoked the first of Halstenberg’s efforts caught on the video of him trying to assert his Fifth Amendment rights
“Should I have a lawyer or anything?” he half responded and half asked.
“We’re just talkin’,” Hernandez responded, untruthfully.
Hernanez then showed Halstenberg a photo of him driving in an area on the eastern side of Highland, removed from the casino, which is on the west side of the city.
“That’s weird,” said Halstenberg. “I don’t remember driving around.”
When Halstenberg engaged with Hernandez regarding the detective’s insistence that he was in various parts of Highland that day and he remembered only that he had gone home, Hernandez pointedly said, “You were seen on several cameras on the east side of Highland.” The detective then disarmingly suggested, that Halstenberg was simply driving around “maybe just to clear your head.”
Halstenberg said, “I don’t remember, though. I went home. I honestly don’t remember driving around.” He repeated that he didn’t have anything to do in Highland.
There ensued a protracted set of exchanges between Hernandez and Halstenberg in which the detective insisted that Halstenberg was in Highland and Halstenberg denied having any recollection of being there and that he had gone home after leaving the casino.
“So, why would cameras be picking you up all over Highland?” Hernandez demanded.
Halstenberg then postulated that he had perhaps gotten to the casino later in the day than he had remembered. This led into a digression in which Halstenberg said that he did not normally go to the casino on his own but had, on occasion, accompanied his mother there. At the mention of his mother, he began to tear up and, yet handcuffed, placed his head on the table in front of him and started to sob.
At that point, Halstenberg made his second attempt to assert his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, stating, “I don’t want to make a statement.”
Hernandez, momentarily slipping out of his hard-edged persona, sought to apply minimalization.
He offered an assessment that Halstenberg was “not evil,” but that there are “times when we go through things in life.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Halstenberg said.
To Hernandez’s assertion that “You need to tell me” what Halstenberg was doing in Highland, Halstenberg then latched onto one of the suggestions Hernandez had sown into the interrogation earlier.
“Maybe I was just clearing my head, driving around,” Halstenberg said. “I do that sometimes. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
There followed further back and forth between them, with Halstenberg asserting he could not remember being in Highland and that he had gone home, with Hernandez insisting he was in Highland on September 5 and Hernandez demanding to know what he was doing there.
“I think I should have a lawyer,” Halstenberg said, in his third effort to assert his Fifth Amendment rights.

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