United States v. Schnapp

322 F.3d 564 (8th Cir. 2003)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

A fire broke out at the St. Clair One-Stop Convenience Store which was owned by D's parents and operated by D and his wife. Fire and police personnel responded within a few minutes. D and an employee of One Stop, Brandy, had just left the store when an Officer radioed the dispatcher about the fire. Just before they left, Brandy said D had forgotten his jacket and went back into the store to retrieve it while she waited at the door. He was gone for about a minute. When he returned, he set the security alarm, and they departed. Brandy and D are cigarette smokers and had been smoking at the store on the day of the fire. Brandy testified that D had a policy of not allowing ashtrays to be dumped into trash bags within the last half hour of the work day and she believed that the policy had been followed on the day of the fire. While an Officer was radioing the dispatcher, the security company monitoring the One Stop's alarm system detected motion within the building and notified D. D had set the alarm as 11:02 p.m. and the time that the motion detector was activated at 11:06 p.m. D immediately returned to the store, where he met a police officer, Officer Calhoun, who had responded to the radio dispatch. Calhoun examined the building from the outside and observed no signs of forced entry. He obtained keys to the building and gave the keys to the firefighters who had arrived on the scene. The fire was extinguished at approximately 12:16 a.m. D accompanied by Calhoun, was permitted to enter the store, where he recovered some cash, lottery tickets, and a gun. Schuhmacher, a fire investigator, had been called to the scene shortly after the fire started. He entered the One Stop building on several occasions after the fire. Based upon his inspections of the building and interviews of D and Brandy, he concluded that the fire was not ignited by natural gas coming from the furnace, smoldering cigarette butts in the trash, a faulty gas line, the electrical systems, flammable liquids spilled or poured on the floor, or any other accidental cause. He testified that, in his opinion, 'the fire's origin was the furnace storage room area located at floor level and was deliberately introduced by a human being.' Buxton was hired to conduct a fire cause-and-origin investigation by the company that had insured the One Stop building. Buxton testified that, in his opinion, the fire had been deliberately set using ordinary combustible items such as cardboard boxes, beer cases, and paper bags at floor level. At the time of the fire, One Stop was having financial difficulties. One-Stop, was delinquent on taxes by approximately $30,000 and was on the verge of having its business license revoked. Defendant paid approximately $10,000 on April 8, 1998, but needed to pay another $3,700 by April 10, 1998, to avoid revocation. One Stop had, in the past, received 23 notices of imminent revocation of its business license, but its license had never actually been revoked because D had always paid on time. All the testimony from everyone showed that the store was in severe financial difficulty. D cross-examined the government's witnesses. Schuhmacher admitted that before taking his job with the prosecutor's office, he was employed as a fire investigator with the company that was partly owned by Buxton. Some of the government witnesses conceded, on cross-examination, that there was evidence of electrical arcing at the scene of the fire; some also conceded that, if styrofoam products were stored in the furnace room, as D later testified, that could explain the rapid acceleration of the fire because styrofoam is highly flammable. Government witnesses further agreed on cross-examination that the fire could have spread in the same manner whether started accidentally or deliberately. They uniformly agreed that D cooperated fully with their investigations. D presented three witnesses: (1) Ronald Gronemeyer, a fire cause-and-origin expert, (2) Lawrence Schnapp, D's father and the owner of the One Stop, and (3) D. Gronemeyer had been hired in 1998 by Lawrence Schnapp after Secura denied insurance coverage. Gronemeyer testified that it was 'difficult to impossible' to determine where in the furnace room the fire had started. He opined that there were several possible sources of ignition of the fire. He agreed that arson was a possibility, but he could not say with reasonable certainty that arson was the cause. D took the stand and offered statements from Schuhmacher regarding the cause of the fire. P noted that D had questioned Schuhmacher about the alleged prior inconsistent statement despite having the opportunity to do so when cross-examining Schuhmacher during the government's case-in-chief. Schuhmacher told him that the fire probably started high, probably in the ceiling, and burned downward. The district court sustained D's hearsay objection. D was convicted and appealed.