The person accused of in the end igniting the devastating Palisades Fireplace has been “a scapegoat from day one,” his high-profile legal professional instructed The California Put up.
Miami-based protection legal professional Steve Haney, identified for his flamboyant fashion, instructed The California Put up that his shopper, 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht, has been subjected to “character assassination” because the day of his arrest in reference to the lethal Palisades Fireplace.
“There’s been a presumption of his guilt from day one,” Haney mentioned. “There’s been lots of destructive pretrial publicity.”
Haney insists prosecutors have did not show Rinderknecht began the Jan. 1, 2025 blaze.
“There isn’t a proof that he began the fireplace. That is all circumstantial,” he mentioned.
For greater than per week, Haney and Rinderknecht have watched prosecutors construct their case largely across the defendant’s mind-set earlier than the fireplace. Jurors have been proven conversations Rinderknecht had with ChatGPT, which he allegedly used as a journal to vent about local weather change and the rich.
The federal government has additionally highlighted offended textual content messages despatched to a girlfriend who declined to spend New 12 months’s Eve with him and a French music video he repeatedly performed across the time of the fireplace, which prosecutors argue references burning objects.
“It’s a track about smoking a joint and ingesting tea, not arson,” Haney has argued in court docket.
Prosecutors acknowledged in opening statements that they haven’t any footage exhibiting Rinderknecht igniting a hearth shortly after midnight, relying as a substitute on cellphone data and grainy surveillance video inserting him close to the place the preliminary 9-acre blaze started.
Fireplace specialists have testified that the catastrophic Jan. 7 Palisades Fireplace was a rekindling of the Jan. 1 hearth, which smoldered underground for days earlier than highly effective Santa Ana winds fanned it into the inferno that devastated Pacific Palisades and elements of Malibu.
“Rinderknecht wasn’t wherever close to the Palisades on January 7,” Haney has repeatedly famous.
Earlier than Rinderknecht’s arrest, a lot of the general public blame was directed at Mayor Karen Bass, who was in Ghana on a visit led by then-President Joe Biden when the fireplace erupted.
Critics additionally blasted Bass over empty reservoirs in Pacific Palisades in the course of the disaster, fueling anti-Bass activism and even serving to spark former actuality star Spencer Pratt’s mayoral marketing campaign.
When requested by The Put up whether or not his shopper had grow to be a scapegoat for Bass and the town, Haney declined to go there.
“I’m not allowed to get into that,” he mentioned. “The choose made it very clear that we’re to not handle these problems with negligence. We’ll keep targeted on the shortage of proof that Jonathan began the fireplace on January 1.”
Rinderknecht’s father, Joel, has attended court docket each day and stays adamant his son is harmless. Haney expects to start presenting the protection case Thursday, hoping to influence the all-Los Angeles jury that Rinderknecht will not be the villain prosecutors have portrayed.
“Individuals could have made up their minds already,” Haney mentioned. “Hopefully the jury will preserve an open thoughts and observe the proof.”
