Burning desire to clear name
Contractor lost everything when he was blamed for 2008 blaze— except drive to prove innocence
Seven years ago, contractor Channing Verden was raking in $ 230,000 a year as the proud owner of a land- clearing business in the remote Santa Cruz Mountains.
Today, his income has dwindled to $ 7,500, and all that’s left of his company, Advanced Earth Technologies, is a heap of rusty tools and trucks strewn across a windswept knoll.
Verden wasn’t wiped out by the recession. He lost everything after Santa Clara County prosecutors filed criminal charges against him for causing the 2008 Summit Fire, contending that sparks from large piles of brush he recklessly left to smolder ignited nearby vegetation more than a month later, destroying 35 of his neighbors’ homes and charring 4,280 acres in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties.
Even though prosecutors wound up dropping the charges two years ago after concluding he wasn’t actually negligent, the 56- yearold contractor remains a pariah in the isolated mountain community crisscrossed by dirt roads, without enough money to replace the three teeth he lost because of the stress, let alone to rebuild his defunct business.
But Verden, who lives with his dog, Rosie, in a decrepit trailer off Mount Umunhum Road, hasn’t given up trying to restore his reputation — and neither has the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office.
In an extremely rare move, deputy public defender Javier Rios now is asking a judge to declare Verden factually innocent based on a series of politically explosive accusations that Cal Fire denies, including that its fire investigation was scientifically flawed and its lead investigator utterly untrustworthy. If the request is granted, the case would be wiped off Verden’s record as if it never existed.
“I went from bidding on million- dollar water district soil jobs to having my heavy equipment repossessed,” Verden said. “My credit was ruined … so my independent contractor’s license was revoked. I’m so depressed, I often spend two or three days a week just sleeping. I was not like this before the criminal case.”
Verden’s campaign against Cal Fire comes at the start of what could be a calamitous wildfire season because of the historic drought. But Santa Cruz Mountains resident Rick Parfitt, a member of the Santa Clara County Fire Safe Council, a nonprofit that works with local fire agencies to prevent and reduce losses from wildfires, said he has faith in the agency.
“Cal Fire, especially in Santa Clara County, has been very proactive, including in helping us with field breaks and bringing in crews to create evacuation routes,” he said. “They’re going to make some mistakes over time — that just goes with the turf — but they put out thousands of fires.”
The last time anyone in the Public Defender’s Office can remember filing a petition for factual innocence was in 2004, on behalf of Rick Reinhardt, whose friend framed him for a murder.
In his 55- page petition, public defender Rios makes three main assertions:
The evidence does not support Cal Fire’s conclusion that the Summit Fire was started by a windblown ember because the wind was blowing in the wrong direction and the air was too cool and humid for an ember to survive traveling more than 100 feet.
Verden took every reasonable precaution to ensure his burn did not escape, including creating a 100- foot break between his piles and nearby vegetation. Lead investigator Joshua White is not credible.
Rios argues that White was involved in a secret, illegal money- skimming operation orchestrated by Cal Fire’s civil cost recovery team, which motivated White to blame wildfires on people and companies with potentially deep pockets rather than to conclude the cause of a blaze was arson or undetermined.
The accusation would seem preposterous but for the fact that the state auditor in 2013 reported that Cal Fire had indeed diverted $ 3.7 million from legal settlements into a secret unauthorized bank account, starting in 2005. Also, retired Santa Clara County Judge Leslie Nichols last year specifically lambasted White as well as other state employees in a 75- page ruling for hiding evidence and pinning the blame for the massive Moonlight Fire in Plumas and Lassen counties on the Sierra Pacific lumber company, so the agency could reap millions in a civil judgment for its secret account.
Several retired Cal Fire officials have since criticized those involved in the scandal, saying the Moonlight Fire investigation besmirched the reputation of the many honest, hardworking Cal Fire law enforcement officers.
Rios asserts that the pressure on White was particularly intense in early 2008, shortly before he conducted his investigation of the Summit Fire. In emails, a supervisor expresses concern that the fund is in the red and says he hopes for the next “high % recovery.” Verden said Cal Fire officials asked him during an interview after the fire with his then- attorney present if he had insurance.
But Cal Fire and the state Attorney General’s Office deny Nichols’ conclusion that they were in it for the money and have appealed the Moonlight Fire ruling awarding Sierra Pacific $ 32 million for attorney’s fees and expenses. In an email to this newspaper, a Cal Fire spokesman also defended White and his conclusion that Verden was responsible for the Summit Fire. White, who was out of state last week and could not be reached for comment, has been promoted to chief of Cal Fire’s Tuolumne Calaveras unit, a job that does not include tracing the cause and origin of wildfires, the spokesman said.
“We stand behind our ( Summit Fire) report,” spokesman Scott McClean said in an email. “We understand and respect that it is the district attorney’s decision whether or not to move forward with prosecution.”
The prosecution’s case eventually floundered after a Cal Fire captain in 2009 failed to properly douse a burn pile, sparking the Loma Fire, which destroyed two mobile homes, burned 485 acres in Santa Cruz County and cost about $ 4 million to fight, compared with $ 14.85 million for the Summit Fire.
In Verden’s case, Rios was poised to argue that the contractor was the victim of a double standard — by pointing out that prosecutors never charged the Cal Fire captain with any crime, despite his arguably similar actions. Prosecutors dropped the case in 2013 because of that and haven’t closely reviewed White’s investigation since Nichols issued his scathing ruling.
Normally with an innocence bid like Verden’s, prosecutors would immediately begin weighing whether to oppose it, support it or remain neutral. But in a separate motion, Rios contends that the District Attorney’s Office should be removed from the case because Cal Fire’s secret fund was quietly managed by the California District Attorneys Association, the trade group to which most local prosecutors belong.
Cal Fire paid the district attorneys association $ 373,624 for its management services from 2005 to 2013, which Rios argues amounts to a conflict of interest because it gave the local office, as well as prosecutors across California, “an improper financial incentive to prosecute those it accused of setting wildfires.” Experts say that however unseemly the group’s involvement may have been, the recusal motion is a long shot.
If local prosecutors remain on the case, assistant district attorney David Angel promised, “We will consider the petition with an open mind, as is our practice with all such petitions.”
Verden’s lawyer is hoping a judge will agree before the end of the year that no reasonable cause exists to believe that Verden committed a crime. But it’s tough for the contractor to muster much hope about the future. The self- described hillbilly’s dream of buying a remote piece of property in California or Oregon where he could retire now appears impossible. He used up his savings to make bail and pay a series of private lawyers before he ran out of money and Rios was appointed.
“I’m 56 years old with no Social Security, nothing,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But if nothing else, maybe I can prevent the state from trying to extort someone else.”
“I went from bidding on million- dollar water district soil jobs to having my heavy equipment repossessed. My credit was ruined … so my independent contractor’s license was revoked.”
— Channing Verden