Louis Taylor, a man who appears to have been wrongfully convicted of setting the 1970 Pioneer Hotel fire in Tucson, will go free today after 42 years in prison.
Taylor, who is represented by the Arizona Justice Project, has maintained his innocence for more than 40 years. On the night of the fire, 16-year-old Taylor arrived at the hotel to attend a Christmas party. He was arrested shortly after by police who claimed he had set the fire as a distraction so he could burglarize hotel rooms.
The fire science that was used by investigators in 1970 that led them to label the fire as arson has changed significantly, according to the Innocence Project.
In the episode of 60 Minutes Sunday night, fire science expert John Lentini explained the limitations of fire investigation. “It has been very common for people to start with the proposition that the fire is set. If they can’t find an innocent cause for it, they say, well somebody must have set it. That presumes that we’re good enough fire investigators that we can find the cause of every fire and that’s simply not true.”
A recent Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article published states that advances in arson investigation could now make past evidence outdated, and because of this, several convictions in Pennsylvania are now being challenged. Currently, questionable arson convictions are also under review in other states including Texas, Massachusetts, and here in Arizona.
In the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article Donald Brucker, Allegheny County chief deputy fire marshal, acknowledges that some conclusions he reached while investigating fires a decade ago probably couldn’t be substantiated today.
“Without a doubt, there’s a lot of things that have changed,” said Brucker, who’s investigated fires for 20 years, including the last 13 years for the county.
Ed Wagner, a Tucson Police officer at the time of the fire, said that Louis Taylor was a kid who was terrified of police. Wagner questioned whether Taylor was really capable of committing arson. Wagner said that at the time of the fire, he believe that there was little chance Taylor had caused the fire. He said that if Taylor did start the fire, it would have had to have been by accident.
According to the Arizona Republic, Taylor is scheduled to enter a plea in Pima County Superior Court today, after which he will be sentenced to the time he has already served. Pima County Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Isabel Burruel-Smutzer confirmed the plea arrangement late Friday, “In return for the entry of (his) plea, Mr. Taylor will be found guilty by the court and sentenced to the 42 years he has served in prison.”
The Arizona Justice Project has screened thousands of cases involving wrongful conviction and injustices. There is to “help assure that Arizona’s prisons are not housing those actually innocent of crime or otherwise victims of manifest injustice.”