Videotapes of a Marysville man leaving and returning to his apartment about the time three arsons started should be all the evidence a Snohomish County Superior Court jury needs to convict the man, a deputy prosecutor said Monday.
The surveillance cameras, supplied to Marysville police by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, were set up in the vicinity of the 6700 block of Armar Road in response to a series of fires set in homes, apartments, vehicles and garbage cans.
On trial is Earl Jimmy Smith Jr., 39, who is accused of two counts of first-degree arson and one of second-degree arson.
It is the surveillance tapes and Smith’s own words to investigators that will be enough to convince jurors that the defendant is guilty, deputy prosecutor Jim Townsend told the panel in opening statements.
That’s not so, countered public defender Damian Klauss, who said the state has no evidence against Smith. "There’s no proof, not anywhere near proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Smith is responsible for those fires," Klauss told the jurors.
The cameras were scattered around the neighborhood after a series of 16 arsons between 1999 and early last year. After that, Townsend said, the cameras caught Smith coming out of his apartment in the early morning hours and returning a few minutes later after three more fires.
On April 8, a fire was set against a home, but the homeowner discovered it before there was serious damage. On Sept. 24, a fire was lit in the bed of a pickup. An unoccupied apartment unit in Smith’s own complex was set ablaze Oct. 12, and the fire alarm alerted authorities before the blaze got out of control.
In no case was anyone injured, Townsend said. Newspaper and other solid materials were used to start blazes, and no gasoline or flammable liquids were used, he added.
Townsend said at first Smith said he never left his home at that hour, and then said he might have left to help look for the arsonist who was terrorizing his neighborhood. When confronted with a video of him leaving his apartment in the dead of night carrying a bag or bags, he told officers he was emptying garbage.
Townsend pointed out that the video shows Smith walking past the garbage bin and in the direction of where the fire was set that night. He later returned without the bags.
"The state submits the videotape evidence with one of the fires might be explained as coincidence," Townsend said. It’s not reasonable that it happened three times, he added. "One potential conclusion is that he is responsible for all the fires on those dates."
Klauss said the jurors will see the videos and conclude for themselves whether the person in them is actually Smith, and what that might mean.
Everyone in the neighborhood knew about the fires because the "barking dogs of the press" had been reporting the arsons.
He said Smith was upset police had not arrested anybody, and he had participated in a neighborhood Block Watch program to protect property.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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