Court Opinion

ID: 9517307
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:13:06.658419+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:41:17.453753
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion
DeBruler, J.
— Suspicion naturally befalls the lone survivor of a set house fire because one cannot help but wonder why such person survived while others of equal strength and circumstance did not. That suspicion arose here and was reinforced before the jury by the testimony of the polygraph operator who testified that appellant’s negative response to the question, did you set fire to the house, indicated deception. These two factors were the mainstays of the prosecution’s case against appellant. The tenuity of the other items of evidence identified as significant in the majority opinion to support the required inference that appellant set fire to the Roberson house, is even greater. I cannot agree that the record shows that appellant had an interest in “fires”, escaped substantial injury, or that her account of her actions was implausible on the whole. At 7:00 p.m. on the night of the Roberson fire appellant spoke on the phone with her sister-in-law and they talked about the fact, uncontradicted at trial, that appellant’s grandmother’s house had burned *488two days before and that appellant’s four brothers and sisters who lived there had lost their .clothing in that fire. In the course of this telephone conversation appellant asked how the fire started. There is nothing unnatural or sinister about this inquiry, and it does not support the inference that appellant was interested in “fires” in general or that she was planning to burn the Roberson house.
According to the testimony of nurses who received appellant at the emergency room of the hospital, appellant at the time had singed hair, her face was sooty and burned, she had no shoes on and her feet were muddy and dirty, and her forearms were burned to the extent that a physician immediately had to debride them. She was given a shot of Demerol for pain, her arms were put in soaks, she was catherized and was removed as a precautionary matter to the intensive care unit. This was a serious injury.
I do not agree that’appellant’s account of the events of the fire was shown by the evidence to be implausible. The first account was given by appellant to the physician in the emergency room after the burned flesh had been removed from her arms and after she had been calmed down by a shot of Demerol. This account was overheard by a nurse who was present in the emergency room and who testified about it as follows at the trial:
“A. He asked her what happened and she said that she was in a house fire, that she was sleeping on the couch and she woke up and there was a fire in her room, she went to the parents bedroom, woke them up, and the mother and she went into the childrens room and the mother told her to climb out the window and she would hand the children to her.
Q; And did she make any further comment?
A. She said that no one else came out of the house.
Q. Alright, and was that the sum and substance of the— the statement?
A. ■ Yes.”
*489The basic elements of this account were included in fuller accounts given by her to the fire marshall and to the jury. I find no implausibility in any of them which could be considered as evidence of guilt.
The evidence presented to the jury served only-to create a distinct suspicion that appellant set this fire,- and' does not constitute substantial evidence of such act. Evidence such as this cannot support a guilty verdict. Manlove v. State, (1968) 250 Ind. 70, 232 N.E.2d 874. I would reverse appellant’s conviction.
Note. — Reported at 381 N.E.2d 481.