PUBLISHER'S NOTE: There is a reference in the headnote above to the Angela Garcia case. You can check it out at the link below: A taste!"Post-conviction"Garcia and her family members, along with her attorneys, maintained that she was innocent throughout her three trials. After nearly a decade in prison, the Ohio Public Defender’s Wrongful Conviction Project took on Garcia’s case. In 2015, she won a rare evidentiary hearing, with her attorney Assistant Ohio Public Defender Joanna Sanchez arguing that Garcia was entitled to a new trial due to advances in fire and arson science. Sanchez argued that the testimony of the prosecution’s expert witnesses relied on outdated and widely debunked theories that would be inadmissible in a courtroom today. Specifically, in the third trial, prosecutors introduced photographs—that they claimed to have found just prior to the beginning of the third trial—that had not been developed. The two new witnesses testified, based on the newly-discovered photographs, that the fire started at two distinct locations, the dining room and staircase leading to the second floor. Fire investigators described “puddle patterns,” which they said could be used to determine that an accelerant was used to exacerbate the fire. The “puddle pattern” theory has been widely disproven since the 1999 fire, with fire investigation guidelines now stating that puddle patterns are not a reliable indicator of the presence of an accelerant. According to a renowned fire expert who reviewed the investigation and testimony in Garcia’s case, the conclusions reached by fire investigators were outdated and lacked scientific validity. Plea On May 9, 2016, after nearly two decades of fighting to prove her innocence, Garcia accepted a plea deal requiring that she admit to setting the fire, upholding the aggravated arson conviction while reducing the aggravated murder charges to involuntary manslaughter. The deal came on the morning a judge was set to consider whether Garcia would get a fourth trial. Rather than gamble on the possibility of a new trial—which, if granted, still carried the risk of another guilty verdict and potential life sentence—Garcia could be released from prison in six years. Under the plea agreement, her sentence was reduced to 22 years in prison, 17 of which she had already served. “Surely the prosecutor’s office knew that for Garcia, who had been tried three times, already spent more than 15 years in prison, and was looking at a minimum of 27 more years before she could possibly be released, the deal was too good to pass up,” Sanchez said. “By offering the plea, they prevented it from becoming public that the fire investigation unit had employed unscientific methodology in arson cases for years and that the prosecutor’s office had wrongfully convicted a woman of murdering her two children.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND: From a previous post of this Blog (Link below): : "Facing Life in Prison Based on Shoddy Evidence, a Florida Mother Makes a Deal," by Liliana Segura, published by The Intercept, on April 18, 2025.
"On the morning of the hearing, Rockwell met Taylor, her mother, and Wallace at the courthouse in St. Augustine, where he went over the plea deal one more time. In exchange for the no-contest plea, the state had agreed to drop the arson charge at Taylor’s sentencing, which was scheduled for May 30. Seventh Judicial Circuit Court Judge Lee Smith would then have a range of sentencing options, from three to 13 years. With credit for the nearly three years Taylor spent in the local jail, Taylor could serve as little as a few months in prison. “I think she made the right decision,” Rockwell told me, reemphasizing that Taylor maintains her innocence. Now he plans to present his experts’ opinions at the sentencing hearing, where he will address the flawed forensics, the amended report, and the disturbing history of the state fire marshal’s lab. “They’re still doing the exact same thing,” he said. “Without any punishment or sanctions or anything. And that’s horrifying. Because that can affect somebody for the rest of their life."
——————————————————————
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "And the best outcome we could hope for was the judge exercised some common sense and sentenced her to the least amount of prison time allowed by law based on the plea deal. I'm happy to report that that's what she did. So he gave her three years credit for time served plus five years on probation. She's already served almost three years awaiting trial, so she will only have to go back to prison for a couple of months. She will be released to return home to her family."
—————————————————————————————
PODCAST: Crime To Burn: Link below: "A compromise of our justice system. Michelle Taylor was sentenced today. (Crime to Burn is a true crime podcast that focuses on the dark sooty landscape where true crime intersects with fire. We will explore what really happened in some of the most horrific fire tragedies and fire-related crimes in history including arson and criminal negligence. Hosted by April, a fire protection engineer and a former fireefighter and the other guy (he's seen Backdraft at least twice).
SUB-HEADING: "Science Fiction: The forensics that framed Michelle Taylor>"
GIST: (This is my transcription of the Narrator's comments): "Several weeks ago we brought you the case of Michelle Taylor.
This was the Florida mother accused of setting a fatal house fire that claimed the life of her son in order to collect insurance money.
However, the Florida State Crime lab indicated that they found gasoline in 12 samples taken from the house after the fire.
But when an independent investigator checked their work, he found they had mis Identified gasoline, oh you know, in all of the samples.
So you would think the prosecution would have dropped the charges .But you know...
You see, Michelle Taylor had enough other questionable decisions in her past.
So they decided to come up with something bad on her so that they would probably be able to obtain a conviction because they were just interested in how many convictions they could tally up.
Anyway, Michelle did what so many people do in this position.
She pled guilty to a crime she didn't commit in order to ensure that she wouldn't have to spend the rest of her life in prison.
This is called a dark plea deal, and we've heard about it before in the Angela Garcia case.
So Michelle took the stark plea and today was sentencing.
And the best outcome we could hope for was the judge exercised some common sense and sentenced her to the least amount of prison time allowed by law based on the plea deal.
I'm happy to report that that's what she did. So he gave her three years credit for time served plus five years on probation.
She's already served almost three years awaiting trial, so sh will only have to go back to prison for a couple of months. She will be released to return home to her family.
That's the closest approximation to justice we could have hoped for given the fact that she took a dark plea deal.
however, what happened today wasn't justice.
It was a compromise of justice.
It was a compromise of the legal system.
And it was truly a compromise of the ethics of the prosecutors who were willing to move forward despite of the fact the there was evidence that there was no arson at all.
Well. I said what I said.
So go listen to the Michelle Taylor case.
It's called 'Framed by Forensics' on 'Crime to Burn, and the episode immediately following that is called 'Behind the Byline.'
And it's our interview with Liliana Segura the invesigative reporter that broke the Michell Taylor case.
And she takes us deep inside the problems at the Florida State Crime Lab - and they are appalling.
If you live in Florida, you need to listen and they should horrify you,
Go check it out.
And, yeah, That's the closest approximation to justice we could have hoped for.
But it still feels bad."
------------------------------------------------------
THE INTERVIEW WITH LILIANA SEGURA: THE INVRSTIGATIVE REPORTER THAT BROKE MICHELLE TAYLOR'S CASE:
