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 Mountain’s 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, 202,4 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.