San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Defendant gets chance to offer his take on fire at Ghost Ship
Max Harris, one of two men on trial for the catastrophic Ghost Ship warehouse fire, is set to testify Monday in what his attorneys see as an opportunity to endear himself to jurors and counter the prosecution’s claim that he held sway over the live-in artist collective when the blaze killed 36 people.
“He’s articulate and authentic, and his answers are always better than anything that I could even suggest for him,” said Curtis Briggs, one of Harris’ attorneys. “His truth and his reality will set him free, literally.”
Harris, 29, and co-defendant Derick Almena, 49, face 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter, one for each victim killed in the fire in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood on Dec. 2, 2016. Prosecutors have described Harris as Almena’s right-hand man in the unsanctioned live-work space, which was hosting an electronic music show the night of the tragedy.
While Almena was the master tenant of the building and founder of the collective, Harris collected rent from tenants, worked the door for the party and titled himself the warehouse’s “executive director” in communications in the months leading up to the inferno.
Briggs and co-counsel Tyler Smith plan to use Harris’ testimony to seek to downplay his leadership role and argue that his stature in the Ghost Ship community has been overstated. He’ll also discuss his mentor-mentee relationship with Almena, Briggs said, adding that Harris’ testimony will absolve his co-defendant of crimes as well.
Harris might be the rare witness who will say he wishes he would have done something differently before the fire, Briggs said. He said that if Harris had been approached to add sprinklers or other safety devices to the warehouse, which was full of flammable materials and strung with electrical extension cords, he would have done so.
Harris’ testimony follows three days of defense witnesses who either vouched for his character, minimized his responsibilities in the warehouse or suggested that arsonists ignited the blaze. Investigators were never able to settle on the fire’s cause.
The Alameda County district attorney’s office built its case around the perilous conditions in a warehouse not designed or licensed as a living space or music venue. No sprinklers, smoke alarms or illuminated exit signs left the victims “no notice, no time and no exits,” prosecutors said.
The last time Harris addressed the courtroom, it didn’t go well. Just after Harris made a statement to victims’ families in August, Superior Court Judge James Cramer threw out an all-but-finalized plea deal, citing Almena’s lack of remorse. Cramer’s decision nullified Harris’ plea agreement as well, because the deals were negotiated as a package.
Almena plans to testify as well at the trial. When asked whether it was risky to put him on the stand, his attorney Tony Serra responded, “I’m a different kind of lawyer.”
“Most lawyers are afraid to put their clients on,” he said. Because “their clients are liars? But me, I put my client on almost every time.”
Serra said Almena will testify for “hours and hours,” discussing his artwork, his wife and children, the origins of the Ghost Ship and how decisions were made there in a democratic way. According to the attorney, he’ll say he relied on police, fire and child services officials who visited the space and implicitly gave him a green light to continue using it as he had for years.
Jurors could find Almena to be narcissistic, Serra acknowledged, but he noted that juries often subconsciously hold it against defendants who don’t testify.
“I risk that,” he said. “But it’s more important that a jury knows that he’s up there protesting his innocence.”
More Adachi fallout: The San Francisco public defender’s office has replaced its spokeswoman amid a rocky first few months for the newly appointed head of the office, Mano Raju.
Chief attorney Matt Gonzalez said the office chose to go with someone other than spokeswoman Katy St. Clair when her “temporary exempt position” ran out this month.
St. Clair, a former reporter, was hired in September by then-Public Defender Jeff Adachi, and she knew she would have to reapply after taking a civil service exam. St. Clair said she was confident she would keep her job.
But Raju and Gonzalez called her into a meeting Wednesday to tell her they were “going in a different direction,” she said.
St. Clair said it felt like she was fired, and she believes she was let go, in part, over how the office responded to the May police raid on journalist Bryan Carmody, who had obtained a police report on Adachi’s death in February. The leak angered the public defender’s office as well as Mayor London Breed and other city officials.
The day of the search, Raju put out a statement, through St. Clair, that seemed to condone the action.
“I am pleased that Chief Scott and others are keeping their word and working to get to the bottom of it,” Raju said in the statement.
Police Chief Bill Scott has since conceded that the raid was probably illegal under California’s shield law, which protects journalists form revealing their sources and other unpublished material and specifically prohibits police searches.
It took five days for the public defender’s office to change course and issue a longer statement, saying it “does not condone or support excessive police actions ever.”
By then, the case received national attention and prompted criticism of the public defender’s office, which has a legacy of defending citizens’ civil liberties.
Making matters worse, St. Clair said, she accidentally sent out critical tweets from the public defender’s official account in the days after the raid, thinking it was her personal account.
“Or there’s more to the story, wapo. Wow. This guy is as much of a reporter as I am Beyonce, too,” one tweet said in a reply to a Washington Post story on Carmody.
St. Clair said she deleted the tweets once she realized her mistake.
Raju and chief attorney Gonzalez kept her on the job after she explained what happened, but she suspects the public relations nightmare around the Carmody raid ultimately cost her the job.
Raju sent St. Clair the initial statement condoning the police raid, she said, but perhaps she “should have known better” before sending it out because of her media background. Unlike Raju, St. Clair is not an attorney.
The public defender’s office said its internal office committee recommended hiring another woman, whom it did not identify, to take over communications. She is set to start in July.