Lawyer ashen-faced as pants catch fire in U.S. arson trial
MIAMI— A Miami defence attorney is feeling the heat after his pants caught fire Wednesday after he told jurors during arguments in an arson case that his client’s car spontaneously combusted and wasn’t intentionally set.
As he started speaking to the jury, Stephen Gutierrez, 28, said he noticed his pocket began to feel hot.
“When I checked my pocket, I noticed that the heat was coming from a small e-cigarette battery I had in my pocket,” Gutierrez said via email on Thursday afternoon.
He said he had two to three of the batteries in his right pocket.
The Miami Herald reported Gutierrez was arguing that his client’s car spontaneously combusted and wasn’t intentionally set on fire.
Gutierrez said he quickly left the courtroom and went to a courthouse bathroom.
“I was able to toss the battery in water after it singed my pocket open,” he said.
Gutierrez said the incident was not staged.
“No one thinks that a battery left in their pocket is somehow going to ‘explode,” he wrote.
The lawyer ran out of the courtroom and the judge also had the jurors taken to the jury room. When Gutierrez returned unharmed, he insisted it wasn’t a staged defence gone wrong.
Later in the day his client, Claudy Charles, 48, was convicted of seconddegree arson.
Prosecutors and the Miami-Dade police are investigating the incident. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman also could decide to hold Gutierrez in contempt of court.
Gutierrez said he researched e-cigarette batteries and learned that they can be “extremely dangerous.”