Court: Whiskey can be used as a weapon to start an arson fire
Whiskey is usually mentioned in criminal court only when someone drinks too much and then goes driving. But after a state Supreme Court order in a Bay Area case Wednesday, it also can be considered a weapon used to start an arson fire.
Chasity Hope Johnson was convicted of arson for a fire in January 2021 at her former boyfriend’s house in Cotati. She was sentenced to five years in prison, including three years for using a “device designed to accelerate the fire” — the whiskey in an open bottle that was found in her car, along with two torch lighters. Officers said they also found a trail of liquid around the cat door that allowed pets in and out of the house.
In her appeal, Johnson’s lawyer argued that whiskey cannot be considered a “device,” which state law defines as “a piece of equipment or a mechanism intended, or devised, to hasten or increase the fire’s progress.” But the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said not all mechanisms are machines.
One definition of “mechanism” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “a process or technique for achieving a result,” the court noted in a Dec. 13 ruling upholding the conviction. It also cited a past appellate ruling that upheld a similar sentence for an arson fire started by gasoline, a ruling that found the Legislature had considered a flammable liquid to be a “device designed to accelerate the fire.”
“Whiskey is comprised of alcohol, which, similar to gasoline, is a flammable liquid,” John Devine, a Contra Costa County Superior Court judge temporarily assigned to the appeals court, wrote in the 3-0 ruling. “Moreover, gasoline also is not made to start fires, but rather is intended to be used as fuel for automobiles and other motorized machines.
“We have little difficulty in concluding that the using of whiskey … similarly shows a specific intent to harm” and can be considered a device designed to accelerate the fire, Devine said.
Johnson appealed to the state Supreme Court, which denied review of the case without comment Wednesday. While the state Supreme Court has not issued its own ruling on the issue, its action makes the appellate decision binding on all trial courts in California, at least until another appeals court reaches a different conclusion.
Johnson’s lawyer was not immediately available for comment.